How to Translate a TikTok Video to English, Line by Line

You found a TikTok in a language you don't read, and you want every line in English.

shinmuscat doesn't translate. It gets you TikTok's caption track as text, and sometimes that track is already in English. Here's how to tell, and what to do when it isn't.

1. See whether TikTok translates it for you

TikTok announced "translations for captions and video descriptions" in a July 2022 newsroom post. It said the tools were "available on select videos at this time".

If you only want to follow along while you watch, try TikTok's own translation in the app first. If you want the lines as a file you can keep, carry on.

2. Paste the Share link into the TikTok tool

Copy the video's Share link and paste it into the TikTok transcript generator. It works on public videos up to 60 minutes long that already have captions.

No captions means no transcript. To see why some videos have none, read which languages TikTok auto-captions.

3. Check the language label

shinmuscat returns one caption track, and you can't pick which one. If TikTok has an English track, you get that. If it doesn't, you get the first track TikTok lists. The language shows above the transcript.

• It says English. TikTok has an English caption track for this video. When the speaker uses another language, that English is often a translation TikTok made. Treat it as a translation and check it against the video. You may already have what you need.
• It shows another language. That's the track you'll translate. Go to step 4.

4. Download the SRT

Pick SRT over TXT. Each SRT cue is a number, a time range and the text. If those survive the translation, every English line stays tied to its moment in the video.

TXT is the words only, with no numbers or times, so lines can merge or shift when you translate. TikTok captions to SRT explains the file and how to import it into an editor.

5. Translate it line by line

Free: paste it into Google Translate. Google's help page says: "You can translate up to 5,000 characters at a time when you copy and paste your text." Paste a long SRT in chunks.

Don't upload the file. Google's document translation takes ".docx, .pdf, .pptx, .xlsx" up to 10 MB, and .srt isn't on that list.

Google doesn't say what it does with SRT numbers and timestamps. Check they come back unchanged before you use the file.

Paid: DeepL. DeepL's file formats page marks SRT as "not available" on the free DeepL Account and on Pro Individual. Pro Team, Pro Business and the API plans can translate .srt files.

With an AI chatbot: paste the SRT and ask it to keep every number and timestamp unchanged and translate only the text lines. Then spot-check the result.

6. Check names, slang and numbers

Mistakes in the caption track carry into the translation. shinmuscat warns you under every result: "Captions can miss a word or a name. Check the video before quoting." Google's help adds that "some words may have different meanings".

So fix garbled words in a TikTok transcript first, then read the English against the video. Names and slang are where to look first.

When it reads right, load the translated SRT as captions, or paste the lines into your notes.

Next step

Paste a public TikTok into the TikTok transcript generator, check the language label, then download the SRT.