Get a YouTube transcript in different languages

Many videos offer captions in more than one language. This guide shows how to get a YouTube transcript in different languages by picking the caption track you want, right in the panel — free and with no sign up.

Which languages can you get?

You can get a transcript in any language the video itself offers as captions. Creators often add several caption tracks, and YouTube provides automatic captions in the video's spoken language. Whatever tracks exist for that video, you can read as a transcript.

If a video only has captions in one language, that's the language the transcript will be in. The panel shows you what's available for each video.

How to choose the transcript language

With the free gistcap extension, the transcript panel lets you switch to any caption language the video provides. Open the language option in the panel, pick the track you want, and the transcript updates to that language. You can then read, search and copy it just like any other transcript.

This is handy when you're studying a language, following a creator who publishes in a second language, or you simply prefer to read in your own.

A note on translation

It's worth being clear about the difference. Choosing a language here means choosing from the caption tracks the video already has. It does not machine-translate a video into a language it doesn't offer. If a video has no caption track in the language you want, that language won't be available for it.

This keeps the transcript faithful to what was actually captioned, rather than an automatic translation that might introduce mistakes.

Read and copy in any available language

Once you've picked a language, everything works the same way: click a line to jump to that moment, search the text, and copy it as clean notes. The language you choose is the language you copy.

Frequently asked questions

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