Subtitles in another language - French, German, Spanish
Your course is you, talking. That is its whole value, and it is also the one thing that stops someone who does not speak your language from buying it.
Subtitles are the honest way round that. Every lesson video you upload already has captions written for it in the language you speak (Captions and transcripts, written for me). Those captions can be translated, and then a learner picks the language they want to read in while listening to you.
How to ask
Tell Bernard which course and which language:
Add French subtitles to my Abstracting the Landscape course.
Or name several at once, up to five:
Add French, German and Spanish subtitles to my Abstracting the Landscape course.
That is the whole job. Bernard works through the lessons one at a time, a minute or two each. You can carry on with something else.
There is one thing to approve, once. The language menu is part of your video player, so an updated player is waiting in your drafts along with the translation (How do I approve or undo changes?). Approve that and learners can start choosing.
After that, you are done approving. Subtitles are fetched as a video plays rather than baked into your pages, so every further language you add appears on its own, in the same way your original captions did.
To check what a course has already got, ask which languages it offers. To take one away, ask Bernard to remove it - learners stop being offered it, and the original captions in your own language are never touched.
What learners get
A small menu next to the subtitles button on the video player, listing each language by its own name. They choose once, and it is remembered everywhere on your site - not asked again on every lesson.
Nothing changes for anyone who does not want subtitles. The button still turns them off, and a course with only one language looks exactly as it did.
The part to be careful about
This is a machine translation, and no one has read it. It is genuinely good at ordinary speech and it will get some things wrong: the name of a technique, a material, a place, a joke that does not travel. Those are exactly the words your teaching turns on.
So before you point speakers of that language at the course (Sell a course from my own website), get someone who speaks it to watch a lesson end to end. It takes them half an hour and it is the difference between looking like you made an effort and looking like you could not be bothered. If a language comes out badly, remove it and ask again.
What this does not do
It does not translate your course page, your lesson titles, your written notes or your sales page - those stay in your language. Subtitles help someone who has already found and bought your course. They will not, on their own, bring French speakers to your door.
It also does not dub the video. Your voice is your voice.
The prompt
“Add French subtitles to my [course name] course.”
Press Copy, then paste it into your AI and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard first - a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI.
Questions people ask
- Does this dub my voice into another language?
- No, and deliberately not. Your voice stays exactly as it is - this adds subtitles underneath, so a French speaker reads along while hearing you. A synthetic voice pretending to be you would be a worse product, especially when people are paying to learn from you in particular.
- How good is the translation?
- Good enough to follow a lesson, and not good enough to publish without a look. It is done by machine, sentence by sentence, and nobody who speaks the language has read it. Before you put it in front of paying customers, get someone who speaks it to watch a lesson through. If it is wrong, remove that language and try again.
- How long does it take?
- A minute or two per lesson, running in the background - a nine-lesson course is done inside about quarter of an hour, and the pages update themselves as each one lands.
- What does translation cost?
- If your site has a shop, every language is included - selling abroad needs them, so the shop brings them with it. Without a shop, each extra language is £50 a year; ask us and we switch it on. Four languages cost the same as adding a shop, so at that point Bernard will suggest the shop instead - you'd get a shop and every language for the same money. Everything you add is still a draft you approve before it goes live.
- How does a learner choose their language?
- A small menu appears next to the subtitles button on the player, listing each language by its own name - Français, Deutsch. They pick once and it is remembered across your whole site, so they do not have to choose again on every lesson.
- What if a lesson has no subtitles to translate?
- It gets skipped and Bernard tells you which ones. A lesson is skipped when it has no video, when the video has no sound, or when it is still being transcribed after upload. Wait a few minutes for that last case and ask again.
- Can I have more than one extra language?
- Yes. Name them all in one go - "add French, German and Spanish" - and Bernard does the lot, up to five at a time. You can also add them on different days; each one appears in the learner's menu as it lands. If your languages are bought one at a time and you ask for more than you have room for, Bernard tells you what the extra ones would cost and does nothing until you say yes, so you never end up half-translated by accident.
- Do I have to approve anything?
- Once, the first time. The language menu is part of your video player, and an updated player waits in your drafts alongside the translation, so approve that and learners can start choosing. After that first approval, any further language you add appears on its own without asking you again, because subtitles are fetched as a video plays rather than built into your pages. That is also why it is worth having a speaker check a lesson before you point French customers at the course, rather than after.