Templates
Urdu subtitle & caption generator
Urdu captions run right to left in اردو script, with a start and end time on every word. They are drawn in Noto Nastaliq Urdu by default — a tall, slanting style of the script that needs more line spacing than Latin captions.
No Urdu templates have been published yet. Any template in the full gallery can still caption Urdu: letters its own font cannot draw come from the Urdu fallback face.
Captioning in Urdu
Urdu is written right to left, with letters that join. Both of those affect captions: the order in which words show up, how letters can be animated, and how tall each row has to be. In Captionwale, Urdu can only be transcribed in its own script. Romanised and English-translation output aren't offered.
Right to left, caption by caption
A single Urdu word is enough to make a whole caption run from right to left, and the export uses the same word order as the preview. If an English brand name sits inside an Urdu sentence, it holds its position in the sequence instead of flipping the line around.
With words placed from the right, every new spoken word lands to the left of the previous one, matching the way an Urdu reader's eye already travels.
Joined letters
An Urdu letter changes shape according to the letters beside it. If a word were split into individual letters, each would revert to its isolated form. So letter-by-letter entrances, such as a typewriter reveal or a blur that works one letter at a time, bring every Urdu word in as a whole.
Added letter spacing can break the joining strokes between Urdu letters. Leave Letter spacing at zero for Urdu, and if a template's built-in spacing is visible, use a template without any. The automatic emphasis mark has no list of Urdu function words and tends to choose long words, so check its choice; select a different word and press E to move it.
Nastaliq versus Naskh
Where a template's font has no Arabic script, Urdu appears in Noto Nastaliq Urdu, the calligraphic hand that most Urdu readers learned first. Nastaliq slopes each word downward from right to left and stacks letters on top of each other, so it is far taller than the other scripts here. A Latin face such as Inter needs about 1.2 em per line and Noto Naskh Arabic 1.7 em; by its own metrics, Noto Nastaliq Urdu needs 2.5 em. Increase Line spacing if rows bump into each other on a multi-row template.
Under Native script font there are ten faces for the script. All of them have the extra letters Urdu uses beyond Arabic, ٹ, ڈ, ڑ, ں and ے among them:
- Gulzar and Noto Nastaliq Urdu: Nastaliq, which is what Urdu readers expect to see.
- Amiri, Lateef, Scheherazade New and Noto Naskh Arabic: Naskh, upright and compact, useful for fitting long subtitles.
- Aref Ruqaa, Rakkas, Reem Kufi and Noto Kufi Arabic: display styles for short, bold lines, seldom used for Urdu.
Questions
Can Urdu captions be romanised or translated to English?
No. Captionwale's romanisation and translation use a service without Urdu support, so only native script is offered, and the captions appear in Urdu script, running right to left.
Why do the rows of my Urdu captions overlap?
Nastaliq rises and falls far more than most scripts. Increase Line spacing, or switch to a Naskh face under Native script font, Noto Naskh Arabic for example, which is much less tall.
Why won't the typewriter effect type Urdu one letter at a time?
Breaking a joined word into letters would destroy the shapes that make it legible. Entrances that type or blur letter by letter therefore show each Urdu word appearing in one piece.