One of YouTube's biggest weaknesses is its subtitles system. Basically, the availability of each language (especially Spanish subtitles) depends on whoever uploaded the video, while the service's by ear subtitles can produce very funny results. With the help of VLC, anyone can play videos outside the browser and load an external subtitle file manually, but if you're using Chrome, there is an extension that makes the whole process easier: Subtitles for YouTube.
The most unexpected source of humor is not on social networks or memes, but in YouTube's automatic subtitles. Clearly, the interpretation ability of its algorithms needs some substantial improvements, and personally I can't recommend using them unless you're looking for a laugh or two. Generally, few users upload videos with subtitles to YouTube. After all, the advantage of English over other languages is chilling, and this makes the relevance of subtitles lower.
Fortunately, on the Web there are entire sites dedicated to the free creation and distribution of subtitles. Now, there is an important detail: subtitles on the Web create a very large gray area in legal terms. On one hand, companies consider them protected by copyright, and on the other, they qualify under fair use. Subtitles increase accessibility and the educational potential of a video, while keeping the original work intact.
How to Put Subtitles on YouTube
That said, how can we place external subtitles on YouTube? The simplest way is through the Chrome-compatible extension logically called Subtitles for YouTube. Once installed, the process is reduced to dragging the .srt file over the video. The V key deactivates them, while the G and H keys allow changing synchronization in 50-millisecond intervals.
As an alternative, the extension can search automatically for subtitles on the OpenSubtitles portal. Support is limited to English and Spanish, but I must say it worked wonderfully during tests. A minimal synchronization adjustment, and almost any subtitle will be viable.
Another aspect to highlight about "Subtitles for YouTube" is that the user doesn't need to download anything, therefore YouTube advertising distribution remains unchanged (which avoids many problems). The extension was published many years ago and if someone thought it was defective, it wouldn't still be there. Don't hesitate to try it!
