Use case
Subtitles for teachers and course creators
In teaching, subtitles are not a reach tactic. They are the difference between a student following the lesson and quietly falling behind, and the students who need them most are usually the least likely to say so.
Who benefits, beyond the obvious
- Students studying in a second language, who read more comfortably than they listen and who are the largest group by a wide margin.
- Deaf and hard of hearing students, for whom captions are the whole lesson rather than a convenience.
- Anyone learning terminology. Seeing a technical term written while hearing it said is how the spelling gets learned.
- Students watching in shared or noisy spaces, which is most students at least some of the time.
- Anyone revising. A transcript is searchable in a way a two-hour recording is not.
Terminology is where automatic transcription needs you
Course material is dense with words a general transcription model has rarely encountered: field-specific jargon, named theorems, chemical names, citations, and acronyms. These are exactly the words a student needs spelled correctly, and exactly the words most likely to come out wrong. Reviewing them is a short job with a large payoff. Each language is a separate run that transcribes the audio again, so budget that review for every version you publish.
A practical order of operations
Caption in the language of instruction
Select the original spoken language. This serves comprehension and accessibility for the whole cohort in one pass.
Correct terminology and names
Scan for field-specific vocabulary, citations, and numbers. This is the version students will read most closely.
Translate for international cohorts
Run the corrected material into the languages your students actually need, rather than every language available.
Publish the transcript alongside the video
The TXT file makes the lecture searchable and gives students something to revise from that is not a scrubbing bar.
Accessibility obligations
Educational institutions frequently carry captioning requirements independent of general web accessibility law, and the standards most regulations reference treat captions on prerecorded video as a baseline rather than an enhancement. Video accessibility and captions covers what the standards ask for and what makes a caption track genuinely usable rather than merely present.
Caption a lecture with 50 free credits and see how the terminology comes out.
Continue with Google50 free credits. No credit card needed.Frequently asked questions
Can I caption a long lecture?
Uploads are limited to 500 MB per file, and credits are consumed by length. Long recordings are often better handled in sections, which also makes them easier for students to navigate.
How well does it handle technical terminology?
Common vocabulary transcribes reliably; field-specific jargon and named entities are where errors concentrate. On the Pro and Studio plans you can correct them in the editor before publishing.
Do I get a transcript as well as subtitles?
Yes. Every job returns TXT transcripts alongside the SRT files, in both the original language and the language you selected.
Which languages should I offer?
The ones your cohort actually needs. Thirty are available, but a small number done carefully serves students better than every language done roughly.