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MP4/MOV/WebM… → SRT

Generate Arabic subtitles

Recognise Arabic speech and export subtitles whose punctuation and letters display correctly in players and on TVs. Nothing is uploaded, and there’s no account or watermark.

  1. 1. Drop files
  2. 2. Adjust
  3. 3. Download
  • No upload. Processing happens on your device.
  • Free up to 10 minutes per file. Longer files are subtitled up to that point. No daily quota.
  • No watermark. Your files stay exactly yours.

How to make Arabic subtitles with filetidy

  1. 1

    Add your video or audio file. On this page “Spoken language” is already set to Arabic, so the model doesn't spend time guessing.

  2. 2

    Keep “Subtitles in” on “The spoken language” for Arabic text, or switch to “English (translated)” to get English subtitles of the Arabic speech. Pick “Best” under “Accuracy” if your browser offers it.

  3. 3

    Press “Generate subtitles”, then read through the result in the list and correct spelling, names and dialect words.

  4. 4

    Leave “Right-to-left marks for Arabic” ticked and download the SRT or VTT.

Arabic speech recognition: what to expect

Whisper was trained on a large amount of Arabic, most of it close to Modern Standard Arabic: news, lectures, formal speech. That is where it performs best. Dialects such as Moroccan Darija, Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian or Gulf Arabic are recognised less reliably, and the model often rewrites dialect words into their nearest standard form or spells them inconsistently.

Darija mixed with French is the hardest case, because the model has to switch between two languages and two scripts mid-sentence. The smaller models (“Fast” and “Balanced”) also make more spelling mistakes in Arabic than in English. Choosing “Best” helps noticeably; a Pro version with Whisper large-v3 turbo, which handles dialects better, is coming.

Arabic is written right to left, but subtitle files are plain text that many players lay out left to right. Without help, a full stop or question mark at the end of a sentence can jump to the wrong side. filetidy adds an invisible right-to-left mark (U+200F) to each Arabic line when “Right-to-left marks for Arabic” is on, which is the default, so punctuation stays where readers expect it in VLC and on TVs.

SRT files are saved as UTF-8 with a byte-order mark. Older players and some smart TVs use that mark to recognise the encoding; without it they may show Arabic letters as meaningless symbols.

Best recognised
Modern Standard Arabic (Fusha)
Less reliable
Dialects, especially Darija with French code-switching
RTL handling
Invisible U+200F marks, on by default
SRT encoding
UTF-8 with byte-order mark
Translation
Optional English subtitles from Arabic speech
Recommended accuracy
“Best” (Whisper small) where WebGPU is available

Other ways to do it

Windows

On Windows: show Arabic SRT correctly in VLC

  1. Open the video in VLC and choose Subtitle > Add Subtitle File to load the Arabic SRT.
  2. If the letters show as random symbols, open Tools > Preferences > Subtitles / OSD and set Default encoding to Universal (UTF-8).
  3. If the letters look disconnected or the text is boxes, choose a font with Arabic glyphs in the same settings page and restart VLC.

Files exported by filetidy are already UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so the encoding step is mainly needed for older Arabic SRT files from elsewhere.

Android

On Android: try Live Caption for on-screen text

  1. Open Settings > Accessibility > Live Caption.
  2. Switch it on and check whether Arabic is listed among the caption languages.
  3. Play the video to see captions over it.

Arabic support depends on the phone model and software version, and the captions are never saved as a file.

Arabic text or English translation?

Choose “The spoken language” when your audience reads Arabic, or when you plan to correct the text carefully: you keep the original wording, and any errors are easy to spot for an Arabic reader. This is the right choice for lectures, sermons, interviews and educational videos.

Choose “English (translated)” when the goal is to reach viewers who don't speak Arabic. Whisper translates directly from the sound, which often copes better with dialect than first writing down the dialect and translating afterwards. The translation is literal in places, so a quick read by someone bilingual is worthwhile.

If the speaker uses a strong dialect, run a short excerpt with both options and compare. You only spend a minute and you will see which output needs less editing.

Frequently asked questions

Does it understand Moroccan Darija?

Partly. Whisper recognises a lot of Darija, but less reliably than Modern Standard Arabic, and sentences that mix Darija and French are the most error-prone. Use “Best” if available, and plan to edit the result. Pro, coming later, uses a larger model that handles dialects better.

Why is the punctuation on the wrong side in my player?

That happens when a player lays out an Arabic line as left-to-right text. Make sure “Right-to-left marks for Arabic” is ticked before downloading; the invisible marks it adds tell players that each line is right to left. Subtitles exported with the option off can show the problem.

My TV shows strange symbols instead of Arabic letters. Why?

The TV is reading the file with the wrong character encoding. SRT files from filetidy are saved as UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, which most devices detect. If yours still fails, check its subtitle encoding setting, or try the VTT export.

Can I get English subtitles for an Arabic video?

Yes. Set “Subtitles in” to “English (translated)”. Whisper listens to the Arabic and writes English directly. It cannot translate into French or any language other than English.

Are diacritics (tashkeel) added?

Usually not. Whisper writes Arabic the way it is normally printed, without short-vowel marks. If you need them, for example for Quran recitation or teaching material, add them in the editor.

Why are there spelling mistakes?

The smaller models have fewer parameters to cover Arabic's many word forms, so they confuse similar letters such as ta marbuta and ha, or hamza positions. Switching “Accuracy” to a larger model reduces these errors.

Is the recording sent anywhere?

No. The Arabic speech is recognised by a model running in your browser, and the file stays on your device. This matters for private recordings such as family videos, classes or meetings.

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Last updated October 28, 2026

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