Table of Contents

Translate Video Captions in Kaltura

Markette Pierce Updated by Markette Pierce

Overview

  1. Translations should be applied to all new standard retail courses.
  2. This process should be completed after all video edits are complete and transcripts are copy-edited but before the course goes live for students.
  3. This process should not be applied to courses where videos have already been translated (e.g., course/program updates, for-credit conversions, etc.).
  4. As a general rule, translations will not be applied to OLPS programs unless specifically requested.

Tagging an Entire Course's Videos for Translation

Open utility and course

  1. Launch Firefox.
    1. The tagging process can only be completed in Firefox.
    2. Ensure that you have the Canvas Utilities extension installed. Read more about that process in the How to Install the Firefox Canvas Utilities Extension article.
  2. In Canvas, click the Utilities icon in the upper left corner and select Video Translation Tagger to open the utility.
  3. Navigate to the -M section of the course.

Identify voice type

  1. Find course author info by navigating to the Welcome to Your Course page. (NB: If the course has an older home page design, the course-author info will be on the home page.)
  2. Determine the voice type for dubbing: female, male, or mixed. 
    1. If the voice type is female or male (i.e., either a single course author or multiple course authors with the same voice type), go to A. Standard process in the next section.
    2. If the voice type is mixed (i.e., multiple course authors with different voice types), follow B. Manual process in the next section.

Addressing Voice Gender(s)

Choose the appropriate process below, depending on how many genders are represented by the voice(s) in the videos.

A. Single Voice (Standard Process)
  1. In the Video Translation tagger, select Male or Female as appropriate. Be sure you have selected the correct voice type before proceeding.
  2. Click Tag Videos for Translation.
  3. Wait for the success signal.
B. Mixed Voice Types (Manual Process)

Go to the first video in the course (i.e., the welcome video). In the Edit panel, locate and copy the Kaltura ID. Log into Kaltura. Then:

  1. Find the video using its Kaltura ID.
  2. Open the Metadata panel.
  3. In the “Tags” field, add the appropriate translation-job tags.
    1. If it’s a course (instructional) video:
      1. Caption-and-dubbing tags (translatefull-## [## = two-letter language code])
      2. Voice-type tag (voice-female or voice-male)
        1. Copy/paste the tags from the caption-and-dubbing list below.
        2. Type the voice-type tag separately.
        3. NB: If an instructional video features multiple personalities with more than one voice type, tag it for captioning only (as you would for ATEs — see next bullet b).
    2. If it’s an ATE (or an instructional video featuring multiple voice types): 
      1. Caption-only tags (translate-## [## = two-letter language code]).
        1. Copy/paste the tags from the caption-only list below.
        2. Do not include a voice-type tag for these types of videos.
  4. Ensure tags are activated (blue box with “x”). Use comma or tab if needed.
  5. Click Save.
  6. Repeat steps 1-5 for each video in the course.

Translation-job tags

Copy and paste each list in its entirety, including the commas.

Caption-and-dubbing tags

translatefull-ar,

translatefull-zh,

translatefull-fr,

translatefull-de,

translatefull-he,

translatefull-hi,

translatefull-id,

translatefull-it,

translatefull-ja,

translatefull-ko,

translatefull-ms,

translatefull-pl,

translatefull-pt,

translatefull-ru,

translatefull-es,

translatefull-th,

translatefull-tr,

translatefull-uk,

translatefull-vi,

Caption-only tags

translate-ar,

translate-zh,

translate-fr,

translate-de,

translate-he,

translate-hi,

translate-id,

translate-it,

translate-ja,

translate-ko,

translate-ms,

translate-pl,

translate-pt,

translate-ru,

translate-es,

translate-th,

translate-tr,

translate-uk,

translate-vi,

Retranslating Videos

Sometimes, videos will need to be retranslated. Follow the steps below to retranslate a single video or multiple videos.

Retranslating a Single Video

  1. In the Metadata of the video, remove all tags related to translation.
  2. For example, you will want to remove all of the fulltranslationcomplete-[language code] tags, and the transcribecomplete tag.
  3. Add all of the caption and dubbing tags from above ( translatefull-ar, etc.)
  4. Save your work.
  5. A day later, after the job has run, you should see the tags indicating that the translation is complete.

Re-translating Multiple Videos (i.e., for Course Updates)

  1. Remove all tags related to translation from the affected videos in Kaltura.
  2. Edit the registry file to remove the course from it. Check it for proper formatting, and re-upload to S3 in this location. Keep the name the same, and make sure the file is public.
  3. Follow the tagging process above. Note that you may need to open the QA or DEVYYYY version of the course instead of the -M in step 3.
Update note, 10/20/2025: The process described in this article supersedes the ones outlined here, here, and here.

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