Watch foreign films, K-dramas, anime, and home videos in your language with live captions generated from any media player.
You find a 1970s Italian thriller with no English subtitle track. Your friend shares a family video narrated in Cantonese. A Korean drama on a local streaming app has only auto-translated subtitles that miss half the meaning. VLC, Windows Media Player, MPC-HC, and every other desktop video application sit outside the browser, where tab-based translation extensions cannot reach the audio. Translext connects to any media player on your computer and renders live captions in a floating window that sits over your video.
The extension listens to whatever your computer is playing right now—nothing uploaded, nothing downloaded, no subtitle file created. It streams the audio to a real-time speech translation service, detects the spoken language automatically, and shows the translated text within seconds. You pause, rewind, and skip chapters exactly as you normally would. The captions keep pace with the audio, not with a script, so they reflect what is actually said rather than what was written in a screenplay months earlier.
Open Translext and choose Computer audio from the source menu. Chrome will ask to share content; click Entire screen in the top row of options. Below that, find the checkbox labeled Share system audio and switch it on—this is what allows the browser to capture sound from applications outside Chrome. Click the Share button. Chrome can only share computer audio when bundled with screen sharing, so it requests your entire screen even though Translext needs only the sound. The extension immediately turns off the video feed and uses the audio stream alone. A small caption window appears on your screen, floating above your media player. You can drag it to any corner or edge and it will stay on top of fullscreen video.
Translext generates captions from spoken dialogue, so clear speech in quiet scenes translates accurately. A film with a orchestral score playing under conversation will usually still work, since speech tends to stand out from the score, but a montage set entirely to a pop song produces no captions because there is no spoken language. Heavy accents, rapid overlapping dialogue, and characters shouting over explosions reduce accuracy; the extension does its best but will miss words or phrases. The delay between spoken audio and translated text is usually two to four seconds, long enough that you notice it but short enough to follow the story. Translext cannot translate hardcoded subtitles burned into the video image, on-screen text, or opening credits. It hears only what the actors say aloud.
When you pause the video, the captions stop generating. When you resume, they pick up immediately from the new audio. Rewind fifteen seconds and the extension translates that segment again, because it processes live sound rather than reading from a stored transcript. Fast-forward through a scene and the captions will skip that dialogue entirely—Translext only translates what it hears in real time. If you mute your computer or lower the system volume to zero, the extension receives silence and shows no captions. The floating window has no volume control of its own; it displays text only, with no option to speak the translation aloud when using Computer audio. Close the caption window or stop sharing in Chrome, and your media player continues undisturbed. No files are modified, no subtitle tracks are added to your library.
No. Translext generates captions in real time from live audio and does not create subtitle files in any format. The translated text appears in session history inside the extension, which you can review or delete, but there is no export function to SRT, VTT, or any other subtitle standard. If you play the same video again tomorrow, the extension will translate the audio from scratch rather than loading a saved script.
The extension captures your computer's audio, streams it to a real-time speech translation service, waits for the AI to recognize the speech and translate it, then displays the result. That round trip typically takes two to four seconds. The delay is longer than hardcoded subtitles burned into a film at production time, because those were written in advance. Translext works with the audio it receives right now, so a small lag is inherent to live translation.
Yes. The floating caption window stays on top of fullscreen video in VLC, MPC-HC, Windows Media Player, and other desktop players. You can drag the window to the bottom edge of your screen so it mimics traditional subtitle placement, or move it to a corner if you prefer. The window remains visible even when the media player takes over your entire display.
Translext detects the spoken language automatically for each segment of audio it hears. If two characters switch between Mandarin and English in the same scene, the extension will recognize each language and translate both into your chosen target language. The automatic detection works well when each speaker finishes a sentence, but rapid back-and-forth code-switching in a single breath may confuse the AI and produce mixed or incomplete captions.
You can, but it is unnecessary. Choose Browser tab audio instead—Translext will capture the sound directly from the tab, show captions in a floating bar on the page, and offer the option to speak the translation aloud with the original audio ducked underneath. Computer audio is designed for applications outside the browser; for a video in a browser tab, Browser tab audio is simpler because there is no screen-sharing step.
Translated captions and optional audio translation for online meetings, video calls and videos — in Chrome or any app on your computer. No bots to invite, nothing to upload.