How to translate a YouTube video to English with a voice-over
The Vocnu extension for Chrome, Brave and Edge translates a YouTube video while you watch it. A natural AI voice reads the English translation over the lowered original sound, and English subtitles show over the player. It works with or without captions and on live streams, and new accounts get 20 minutes with the voice-over free.
For Chrome 120 or newer, Brave and Edge on a computer.
Translate a YouTube video in four steps
- Add Vocnu to your browser from the Chrome Web Store. Brave and Edge install it from there too.
- The extension opens the Vocnu app: sign in or create a free account, and press Connect the extension.
- Open the YouTube video and press the Vocnu button in the browser's toolbar, or Alt+Shift+V.
- Choose English and a voice, and play the video. It waits about half a minute at the start while the first part is voiced, then the voice keeps in sync with the picture.
What you hear and see
This is voice-over, not dubbing: one voice reads the translation while the original sound plays on underneath, lowered, so you still hear the speakers, the music and the effects. The lips are not matched.
- Videos with or without captions: a video without them is translated from what is said in it.
- English subtitles over the video, in fullscreen too. Prefer to read? Switch to subtitles only.
- The voice follows pauses, seeking and speed changes.
- Live streams are voiced live, a few seconds behind the picture.
- Ads get no voice, and a video already in English is never voiced or charged.
Doesn't YouTube translate videos itself?
Partly. YouTube's Auto-translate turns a video's captions into subtitles in another language, which you choose in the player's subtitle settings. That helps if you like to read, but you still hear the original language, and the video needs captions first.
YouTube's automatic dubbing adds an AI-dubbed audio track to some videos, which you pick in the player's audio track menu. It is on by default for eligible creators, who can turn it off. It dubs videos in 29 languages into English, but not videos longer than 120 minutes, mostly music or with very little speech, or with speech that is too fast, among others. When a video has an English track, it is free and worth using. Vocnu is for the videos that have none, and for every other site.