Subtitles for online courses. One lesson at a time.

Make one project for each finished lesson

A course is a collection of separate viewing experiences. Export the final video for each lesson before making subtitles, including its opening, examples and closing. A subtitle track made for the complete recording will not match a lesson cut from the middle. Keep the lesson number in the video filename and use the same identifier when you save its Polyglot project.

Import a lesson on your Mac and create the original-language subtitle draft. Transcription runs locally after model setup, so the media is not uploaded for processing. Begin with a lesson containing typical terminology and speaking pace. Review that result before committing to the rest of the course; a clean introduction alone may hide difficult explanations later.

Give recurring terms one approved spelling

Keep a small reference document beside the editor: the course title, instructor names, lesson labels, abbreviations and the terms students must learn. This is a manual review aid, not a custom dictionary automatically applied by Polyglot. Check the text against the spoken explanation and the slide on screen, especially when a familiar word has a specialist meaning.

For example, a photography course might use “exposure compensation” in five lessons. Correct inconsistent wording in the source subtitles before translating. Ask a subject-aware reviewer to check translated terms too. Keep a note of decisions so that the final lesson does not introduce a different translation for the same concept.

Package every lesson and language together

Export the reviewed subtitles as UTF-8 SRT. A naming pattern such as course-02-exposure-v3.en.srt makes the lesson, video version and language explicit. Keep the matching video and saved project nearby. Language labels in filenames are your publishing convention; confirm the target language again when attaching each track to a platform.

If a lesson is replaced, review its caption files as part of the same update. Even a short new introduction can shift every cue. Process the revised video or finish timing in a compatible subtitle editor. Polyglot preserves source cue timing and does not automatically synchronize an old subtitle export with a different edit.

Check the learner experience before opening enrollment

Thinkific documents a workflow for uploading externally created SRT files to individual videos and assigning their languages. Follow its current instructions, linked below, or check the equivalent feature in your own learning platform. Polyglot exports files; it does not connect to your course account or publish lessons for you.

Watch the uploaded lesson with captions enabled, including an exercise and the ending. Check accents, line length and whether the correct language is selected. Speech transcription alone may omit meaningful sounds or speaker context needed for complete captions. Review those requirements separately. Save your approved video-and-subtitle pair so a later correction can be made without guessing which lesson version learners received.

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