Many people have experienced ChatGPT’s translation capabilities, which are more accurate than most translation tools available today, even surpassing Google Translate and DeepL Translate in both quality and precision. I now almost exclusively use ChatGPT for translating foreign texts. Since ChatGPT is so powerful at translation, many people would naturally want to use it for subtitle translation. This article recommends a simple and handy tool called Subtitle Translator Electron. After setting your target language and OpenAI API, you can easily translate subtitles with one click, and you can even choose to use GPT-3.5 or GPT-4.
Subtitle Translator Electron: A Simple and Easy ChatGPT Subtitle Translation Tool for Windows and Mac
Subtitle Translator Electron is an open-source tool available on GitHub, offering both Windows and Mac versions. Below I’ll use the Windows version as an example, though the operation is essentially the same.
When you open it for the first time, this warning will appear. Tap “Other Information” on the screen:
This way it should open normally:
The default is the English interface, with Chinese available. How to configure this will be explained below. This screen lets you set the target translation language. To translate to Traditional Chinese, enter “Traditional Chinese” in the Target language field. Other languages are also supported based on your needs. The Additional notes section below can be left blank:
Like this, manually type in Traditional Chinese. Press Next if there’s no issue:
Next, you can drag and drop the subtitle file you want to translate or select it manually. However, before starting the translation, you need to set up your OpenAI API:
Click Settings in the bottom left corner, where you can change the interface language to Chinese (Taiwan). Enter your OpenAI API key in the API key field. You can enter multiple keys, and according to the developer, using multiple APIs makes translation faster:
OpenAI API Can be obtained on this page：
Below, you can also set the model to use. The default is the standard gpt-3.5-turbo. While its translation quality falls short of gpt-4, it’s much cheaper, and I think gpt-3.5-turbo is more than enough. If price isn’t a concern and you want more accurate translations, you can switch to gpt-4. Saving subtitles also supports bilingual display, with options for “translated subtitles + original subtitles” or “original subtitles + translated subtitles”:
Once the OpenAI API is configured, you can drag and drop the subtitle file you want to translate into it.
Allows you to browse, right? No problem—just click “Start Translation” in the bottom right corner:
Once completed, a translation complete notification will also appear. On the left side, there is some data for reference, including original text input, input, cost in USD, and whether everything has been translated (percentage):
You can also review the translation result, and press Save if everything looks good:
It’ll have Chinese subtitles! In the future, as long as you have a subtitle file, you can easily translate it to Traditional Chinese with this tool—no need to worry about not having Chinese subtitles:
Source: KOCPC Chinese