YouTube Translated Transcript Actor

An Apify Actor that extracts and translates YouTube video transcripts.

Overview

This Actor fetches the transcript (subtitles) from a YouTube video and translates it to a specified language. It returns both the original and translated transcripts, preserving the timing information for each subtitle segment.

Key Features

• Extracts transcripts from YouTube videos that have captions (automatic or manual).
• Translates the transcript to a target language using ISO 639-1 language codes (e.g., en, es, fr).
• Maintains the timing data (start time and duration) for each line of text.
• Handles common errors like invalid URLs, missing captions, or translation service issues.

Input

The Actor runs with a simple JSON input object.

Input Example:

{
  "videoUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "targetLanguage": "es"
}

Output

The result is a structured JSON object containing the video ID, original transcript, translated transcript, and a status message.

Output Example:

{
  "videoId": "1WEAJ-DFkHE",
  "originalTranscript": {
    "transcript": [
      {
        "start": "0.120",
        "dur": "1.650",
        "text": "- We're gonna fly on this jet"
      }
    ],
    "language": "en"
  },
  "translatedTranscript": {
    "transcript": [
      {
        "start": "0.120",
        "dur": "1.650",
        "text": "- Vamos a volar en este jet"
      }
    ],
    "language": "es"
  },
  "message": "Translation completed successfully!"
}

Each transcript is an array of segments. Each segment includes:
* start: Start time in seconds.
* dur: Duration in seconds.
* text: The subtitle text.
* language: The language code of that transcript.

How to Use

Call the Actor using the Apify API client.

Basic Usage:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const input = {
  videoUrl: 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID',
  targetLanguage: 'es'
};

const run = await client.actor('your-actor-id').call(input);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items[0]);

Batch Processing Multiple Videos:

const videos = [
  'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO1',
  'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO2'
];

for (const videoUrl of videos) {
  const input = { videoUrl, targetLanguage: 'fr' };
  await client.actor('the-actor-id').call(input);
}

Supported Languages

Translation is supported for many languages using their standard two-letter codes, including but not limited to: English (en), Spanish (es), French (fr), German (de), Italian (it), Portuguese (pt), Russian (ru), Japanese (ja), Korean (ko), and Chinese (zh).

Error Handling

The Actor validates input and handles common issues:
* Returns an error for invalid YouTube URLs or non-ISO language codes.
* If a video has no available captions, it will return a clear error message.
* If the translation service fails, it will return the original transcript with a warning.