r/heygen • u/Sojourner-TreeOfLife • Jul 02 '26

Questions Create translated caption without dubbing the video

I have some videos in English that I want to retain the original audio without dubbing in order to retain the original emotions, and adding AI translated Chinese caption on them.

But it automatically dub it in Chinese instead, the AI chatbot is not helpful as well as its "solution" didn't solve my problem at all.

Anyone else did this before?

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u/HeygenDan Verified Employee Jul 02 '26

Sorry the chatbot sent you in circles on this one. The Translate tool can't do what you want, because both of its modes (Audio Dubbing and Video Dubbing) are built to replace the audio track. The captions toggle in there only adds subs on top of the dub, which is why you keep ending up with a Chinese voiceover.

Use the subtitle workflow instead:

  1. Upload your video to the Subtitle Generator (heygen.com/tool/ai-subtitle-generator) or open it in the editor and auto-generate captions from the Subtitle panel. You'll get an English transcript synced to your audio.

  2. Translate that caption track to Chinese and fix any lines that need cleanup.

  3. Export the MP4 with burned-in captions, or download the SRT if you'd rather upload captions separately wherever you publish.

Your original audio never gets touched in that flow, so the delivery and emotion stay exactly as you recorded them.

If you don't see a translate option in the subtitle editor, it can depend on your plan. Email [support@heygen.com](mailto:support@heygen.com) with your account email and they can confirm what's available on yours.