Hello and welcome to Mr Tompkins Ed Tech.
In my last video we looked at how we can create subtitles for our YouTube videos the easy
way, and once created, how we can quickly translate these into lots of other languages
for free.
This is a follow-up to that video, or part 2 of that process.
So if you missed part 1, you might want to click on the card appearing at the top of
the screen now, watch part 1 first and come back to this one afterwards.
If you have already seen it and are back for more, then you clearly like my channel so
why not subscribe by pressing the big red button below?
That way you’ll know when I upload more useful videos to help you to help your YouTube
channel grow.
Todays video is about translating your titles and descriptions to help increase your reach.
I’ll be showing you how you can easily translate your videos’ metadata into multiple languages
so that viewers searching for content in Arabic, Hindi or Russian can find your videos just
as easily as those searching using English.
By using this technique, non-english speaking viewers will better recognise what your content
is about when it appears in their search rankings, thus increasing their likelihood to click
on it and view your content.
English might be the dominant language on Youtube, but did you know that there are actually
more viewers searching for content in other languages than there are those searching in
English?
So if your video titles are in English only, you are reaching out to less than half of
your potential audience on YouTube.
There is a whole other YouTube out there, and you can get in touch using the inbuilt
features in the creator studio to add titles and descriptions in alternative languages.
YouTube will then display your content in the appropriate language for the appropriate viewer – so
if a French speaker searches for related keywords, then your video’s title and description
will appear in their search results in French.
Firstly, I’ll be showing you how easy it is to do this.
Next I’ll let you know how to test it’s actually working and YouTube is serving your
content in multiple languages (which is actually not as straightforward as you might think!).
Finally, I’ll be showing you how to use YouTube’s analytics features to check whether
you are actually reaching your new target audience.
So lets start with the translation.
I’m going to open up YouTube Creation studio and edit one of my videos.
Underneath the video window you will see a tab entitled “translations”.
On the left side you can SET an original language for your video, and if you haven’t done
this already, you should do this first.
You can see that I’ve set this one to English (UK) already.
On the right side there are some dialog boxes for adding the translated text.
First though we are going to need to translate our title and description.
I can pick a language to translate into.
Tap the “translate into” dropdown menu, “add new language” and “Select language”.
Lets start with Dutch – so type it in here.
I now have two boxes to add my translated dutch text into.
We haven’t translated the text yet though, so I’m going to set up two tabs in my browser
pointing at google translate (http://translate.google.com).
Copy the title text from the youtube screen and paste it into the left hand side of first
google translate screen.
Next copy the description text from youtube into the left hand side of our second google
translate screen.
Before translating, you might want to review and simplify the language used in your title.
Different languages can have very different rules for grammar, and auto-translation tools
are far from perfect.
So keep it simple, remove prepositions where possible and make it more bulletpoint.
I’m going to pick Dutch from this dropdown menu, copy the translated text by pressing
this button here, and then I simply paste it into the top box in the youtube edit screen.
Doing the same with my description text – translate to Dutch, copy button, paste into YouTube
screen.
Now “save changes” and we are done.
It’s very simple to add more languages.
Tap the “translate into” button again and choose another language, this time I’m
going to add “German”.
Back to our first google translate screen, change the translation language to German,
copy, and paste here.
Then to our second google translate screen containing our description, change to German,
copy, paste in the second box and save.
Rinse and repeat for whichever languages you wish to translate into.
Now when I first tried this out for myself, I was actually doubting it was working as
I couldn’t find a way to make YouTube show me the translated text – I tried changing
the language setting in youtube, in my google account and everywhere else I could think
of, but I couldn’t get it to show up.
I thought I must have missed something somewhere, but then I found out that YouTube looks at
your search history when deciding what language version to serve you, so when I switched my
preferred language to say, Dutch, it would still only show me the English version of
the text because it knows that’s what I usually like to watch.
So to test it is working, you need to go to a private or incognito mode of your browser
first, then switch your language –
So let’s give that a go.
I’m going to search for one of my videos having set my preferred language to Dutch.
I’ll search using English keywords because I’m not yet ranking as highly using the
Dutch ones.
Interestingly, search rankings are also different depending on the preferred language selected.
As the algorithm follows the audience, and translating your metadata will encourages
additional views in that language, you’ll have a better chance for competing for top
ranking in that language.
Often the videos I’m competing against are in English and haven’t bothered to translate
their titles, so I’m ranking higher comparatively in those other languages.
So you can see that my translated videos are coming up in Dutch.
Ok, so we’ve translated our metadata and seen that it is showing up in search for those
languages.
How do we know it’s making a difference?
Well, in the Creator Studio Analytics, there are a couple of useful reporting features
to look at.
The “Translations” report gives watch time and views for each translated language,
so this will tell you which languages your content is most popular in.
There is also an option to look at “Translated” data only in a number of the other reports.
Turning this on in the “Traffic Sources” report allows you to drill down on YouTube
searches made in other languages that have led viewers to your content.
You can see I’ve been picking up views from users searching in Thai, Swedish, Spanish,
and many more.
So over the last two videos, we’ve seen how we can use translation tools to create
captions, titles and descriptions in multiple languages which will increase visibility of
your content to non-English speakers and boost your watch time.
If you have enjoyed the video please give it a big thumbs up, and don’t forget to
subscribe for more helpful videos for creators.
I’ve been receiving lots of positive feedback from creators who have tried making and translating
subtitles on their own channels, like this one from Bernadette’s POST.
Bernadette’s POST is a quality small channel full of well-crafted videos covering recipes
and creative projects, and if you are not subscribed to her already, you should definitely
go check her out.
After adding translated subtitles to her content last week, she tells me it’s already helping
her channel reach a wider audience.
I’d be really interested to hear whether it’s helped your channel grow too so please
come back and tell me in the comments below.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.
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