Templates
Kannada subtitle & caption generator
Kannada captions can be in ಕನ್ನಡ, in Roman letters, or translated into English. Each preview below uses Kannada, where a cluster tucks its second letter under the first — so look at how much room a style leaves below each line.
No Kannada templates have been published yet. Any template in the full gallery can still caption Kannada: letters its own font cannot draw come from the Kannada fallback face.
Captioning in Kannada
Write the word ಕನ್ನಡ and you see the feature that most shapes Kannada captions: its double n is one ನ with a smaller ನ hanging beneath. Those hanging forms, ottaksharas, make Kannada lines tall. Two other things matter. Kannada resembles Telugu without sharing its letters, which affects fonts, and it adds its own endings to English words, which affects romanised captions.
Talekattu and ottaksharas
A typical Kannada consonant is a rounded shape topped with a short stroke, the talekattu. Vowel signs attach at that top or on the right side. In ಕಿ, the head changes to carry the vowel, while ಕು gains a hook on the right.
A consonant that follows another without a vowel between them shrinks into an ottakshara and drops below the first letter. There is one in ಕನ್ನಡ and two in ಸ್ತ್ರೀ. On two-row captions, give the rows extra room, or the ottaksharas in the top row will touch the letters in the bottom one.
Kannada fonts, not Telugu ones
Kannada and Telugu share an ancestor, so many readers think their letters look the same. They are still two alphabets, and a font has to be drawn for each. That is why there are two Baloo fonts here: Baloo Tammudu 2 is for Telugu and Baloo Tamma 2 for Kannada, related in design but separate. When a template's font is Latin only, Baloo Tamma 2 draws the Kannada. Other Kannada options:
- Sans-serifs for sentence-length captions: Noto Sans Kannada, Anek Kannada, Hind Mysuru.
- Serifs: Tiro Kannada, Noto Serif Kannada.
- A broad display face, Padyakke Expanded One, which leaves room for fewer words per row.
Kannada script, Kanglish or English
Spoken Kannada attaches its case endings to English nouns. 'To the office' becomes ಆಫೀಸಿಗೆ, the English office with ige added, and in Kannada script it is a single word. In Latin letters it could be officige, office-ige or office ige, and Kannada speakers typing in Latin use all three. Pick one and keep it.
Kannada shows respect through names, not only pronouns. ರವಿ ಅವರು, Ravi followed by ಅವರು, refers to Ravi politely. English has Mr or nothing, so a translation turns either formal or blunt. If the courtesy matters, Kannada script or a romanised caption will keep it.
Checking a Kannada transcript
Fast speech blurs some pairs, and swapping ಳ for ಲ or ಣ for ನ changes the spelling even if listeners hardly notice. Every ottakshara needs checking as well, since leaving one out deletes a consonant: ಕನಡ and ಕನ್ನಡ are different words. Kannada has digits of its own, such as ೧, ೨ and ೩, but Western digits usually make prices and phone numbers easier to read.
Questions
Will a Telugu font draw Kannada captions?
No. However alike they look, the two scripts use different characters, so the font must include Kannada. Baloo Tamma 2 and Hind Mysuru do; their Telugu counterparts are separate families.
Why do Kannada captions on two rows look cramped?
The ottaksharas sit below each row, so rows need more space than English. Raise Line spacing until the upper row's ottaksharas no longer touch the row beneath.