Getting a Yiddish video in
Drop in the video file without converting it: MP4, MOV, MKV, WEBM, AVI, 3GP or a screen recording from your phone. The audio is pulled out on our server, so every timestamp still points to the right moment in the video. If the video is online, choose Import from link and paste a public link from YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Dropbox or Google Drive, or a direct link to the file; only the sound is downloaded.
WhatsApp videos can be saved and uploaded as files. The draft opens beside a player; click a line to replay it while you fix it.
Spelling, Hebrew words and a rough draft
Yiddish has little training data in the speech model, so expect a rough draft with many corrections. It is written right to left in Hebrew letters, and there is more than one spelling tradition: standard YIVO spelling, and the spelling common in Hasidic publications. The draft may mix them, so choose one while editing.
Yiddish speech is full of Hebrew and Aramaic words, especially in religious talks, and these are spelled in Hebrew fashion. The model often misses them or spells them phonetically. American Yiddish also borrows English, which may come out in Hebrew letters. Hasidic and Lithuanian accents are recognised with the same caveats.
Yiddish videos people transcribe
Typical uploads:
- Oral histories and interviews with Holocaust survivors and elders, for archives.
- Shiurim and religious talks, to share as text.
- Old films and theatre recordings, for study and subtitles.
- Family videos and wedding speeches.
- Lessons and lectures for Yiddish learners.
Right-to-left subtitles
Export SRT or VTT once the draft is corrected. The text is UTF-8 and right-to-left. YouTube shows it correctly; some desktop editors put punctuation at the wrong end of the line, so check the editor's right-to-left setting. Yiddish uses combining marks such as the dot in פּ and the line in אַ, so use a font with full Hebrew support. There is no built-in romanisation.
English and the audio page
The transcript stays in Yiddish; there is no built-in translation. To read it in English, open the Google Translate link on the transcript, or use the AI prompt export to hand the text to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. Machine translation of Yiddish is weaker than of Hebrew or German, so check important passages with a reader. Speaker labels are available on paid plans and with a Minute Pack. For audio-only recordings, see the Yiddish audio to text page.