Arabic to English translation, voice and video files

What happens in an Arabic to English voice translation

Kotosay first writes out the Arabic exactly as it was said, and the English is made from that transcript in short segments. The original timing travels with each segment, so you can translate Arabic audio to English and still trace every sentence back to your recording.

With that timing in place, the English file can be loaded as subtitles. A passage with a heavy accent, rapid speech or an unfamiliar name is never more than a timestamp away in your own file.

Modern Standard Arabic and the dialects

Modern Standard Arabic, heard in news, lectures and sermons, follows the written language closely. Everyday speech in Cairo, Riyadh, Beirut or Casablanca uses its own words and sounds, and those are the parts to check first.

• Egyptian Arabic often says ezzay for how, where the standard has kayfa.
• Gulf speakers say wayed or wajid for a lot.
• Levantine Arabic uses shu for what.
• Maghrebi Arabic mixes in French and Amazigh words.

TipUpload a short recording first and read the free 5 minutes. You see quickly how your dialect comes through before you commit to a long file.

Inshallah, mashallah and other set phrases

Arabic speech is full of set phrases such as inshallah, mashallah and alhamdulillah. A translation may render them as God willing or thank God, or keep the Arabic word.

Choose one approach for the whole text. Many English readers know inshallah, while alhamdulillah as the answer to how are you often means little more than fine, thanks.

Speakers who switch to English or French

Professionals in the Gulf often drop English terms such as meeting or deadline into Arabic, and speakers in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia switch into French mid-sentence. Pick Arabic from the language list when most of the speech is Arabic, then read the switched passages in the editor.

Names and spelling in English

Arabic names have several English spellings, such as Muhammad, Mohammed and Mohamed, or Abdulrahman and Abd al-Rahman. Pick one spelling for each person and use it throughout. Place names and titles need the same care.

Keep the article and family markers the way the person writes them. One family writes al-Rashid, another Alrashid, and bin or ibn follow the same rule.

Five and twenty: how Arabic says numbers

Arabic puts the units before the tens, so twenty-five is spoken as khamsa wa ishrin, five and twenty. A number heard in the wrong order turns 25 into 52. Compare every figure in the English with your recording, above all prices, years and phone numbers.

Hijri dates and month names

Speakers may give dates in the Hijri calendar, such as the 10th of Muharram. Month names also differ by region. Levantine speakers say Tishreen al-Awwal for October, while Egypt and the Gulf say Oktobar. Add the Gregorian date in brackets when your readers need it.

Two scripts, two directions

Arabic is written right to left and English left to right. If you also want the Arabic text, transcribe the same file on the audio or video page. Both versions carry timestamps, so a line in one language is easy to find in the other by its time.

Arabic and English in one Word file

For a bilingual report you may paste Arabic and English lines into one document. In Word, set each Arabic paragraph to right to left text direction. Otherwise full stops and numbers can jump to the wrong end of the line.

An English track for Arabic video

Upload the video itself to translate Arabic video to English subtitle files. With Single file or Unlimited they come out as SRT or VTT, cued to the Arabic speech, and YouTube Studio and video editors accept both. For a written report, download the same result as plain text, from Arabic audio to English text in one document.

Quotations in sermons and lectures

Sermons and religious lectures often quote the Quran or the hadith in Classical Arabic. For a published text, use an established English translation of each verse and name it, and note the sura and verse next to the timestamp.

Court, ministry and embassy papers

A court, a ministry or an embassy will expect a certified translator's work. Give that translator the Arabic transcript, and they begin from written text rather than raw audio.