Templates
Malayalam subtitle & caption generator
Malayalam subtitles can be in മലയാളം, in Manglish-style Roman letters, or translated into English. Malayalam words tend to be long, so styles that show fewer words at once usually suit a vertical video better.
No Malayalam templates have been published yet. Any template in the full gallery can still caption Malayalam: letters its own font cannot draw come from the Malayalam fallback face.
Captioning in Malayalam
Two features of Malayalam drive caption decisions. Endings join onto words and make them long, which limits what fits on a row. And consonant clusters can be drawn as fused shapes or partly spelt out, which means the same word can look quite different in two fonts.
Long words, narrow frame
Where English uses several words, Malayalam often uses one, adding meaning onto the word itself. വരുന്നുണ്ടായിരുന്നു, roughly 'was coming', is one word. Captions are built from whole words, so a four-words-per-row style can carry a sentence of such words beyond both edges of a 9:16 frame.
Before trimming words when this happens, pick a style that puts fewer words in each caption, or use a smaller font. Check the clip's longest sentence, not its opening one, because one long verb may be the only overflow.
Fused clusters or a visible chandrakkala
Fonts for Malayalam disagree about how many clusters become a single shape. Several hundred fused forms appear in Chilanka, Manjari and Gayathri, much as in older print. The two Noto families, Sans and Serif, have fewer. Arima, Anek Malayalam and Baloo Chettan 2 have just a few dozen, and show many clusters with the chandrakkala (്) written between the letters.
Either approach is legitimate. Mixing them in one video, though, looks sloppy, so pick a face your viewers read comfortably and stay with it. In a template with a Latin font, Malayalam is drawn in Baloo Chettan 2; for the fused look, set Native script font to Manjari or Gayathri. The eight faces fall into three groups:
- For full-sentence subtitles, plain faces: Gayathri, Manjari, Anek Malayalam and Noto Sans Malayalam.
- One serif: Noto Serif Malayalam.
- Best kept to short lines: handwritten Chilanka, plus Arima and Baloo Chettan 2, both display faces.
Chillu letters, Manglish and English
The five chillu letters, ൺ ൻ ർ ൽ ൾ, are consonants that end a syllable without a following vowel. All eight faces have them, so അവൻ and അവൾ render properly in any of them.
Typing Malayalam in English letters, often called Manglish, is common on phones. Romanised captions are produced from the Malayalam transcript. Spelling drifts most at long vowels and doubled consonants, so പാട്ട് may appear as paattu or as pattu. Give each name one spelling and keep it. The English translation is also made from the Malayalam transcript. A translated line begins when the Malayalam line it came from is spoken, but its words are spread across the line, so confirm that highlights fall close to the matching audio.
Long words attract the automatic emphasis mark. In Malayalam that can mean a verb loaded with endings gets the mark instead of the word you'd stress, so select the word you want and press E to shift it.
Questions
Why does one Malayalam word look different in two fonts?
The fonts fuse different numbers of clusters into single shapes. Gayathri and Manjari hold many fused forms; Arima and Baloo Chettan 2 show the chandrakkala more often.
Can a Hindi or Tamil template show Malayalam captions?
Yes. Any letter missing from the template's font is drawn from a Malayalam face: Baloo Chettan 2, or whatever you choose under Native script font. Every template can therefore show Malayalam.