What Languages Are Best for Translating YouTube Videos?

Stop asking Google. The Creator Tools team shares their own research on a topic that matters to every YouTube blogger: the best languages to translate YouTube videos into, and how to test them on your own channel.

Some types of content will perform better in one country, while others will perform worse in that same country.

"What languages should I translate my YouTube videos into?" — it's one of the most common questions we hear. We'd love to just hand you a list and say "translate into everything," but that's not the right answer. Bloggers work in different niches, and each niche has different demand across countries and language groups. Cultural context shapes viewing habits, which means the ideal language set varies by creator.

That said, there are universally popular languages — and we'll cover those below.

How to Find the Best Languages for Your YouTube Channel

Blogger: How do I figure out which languages are best for my videos myself?

Creator Tools: It's simple. Here's the step-by-step process:

Step 1. Translate several videos on your channel into all the languages available — for example, 10 videos across 100 languages each.

Step 2. Open YouTube Analytics and check where you see better retention and more views per language.

YouTube Analytics Geography report on a laptop: views, watch time and average view duration by country

Step 3. Identify the languages with the worst retention and lowest view counts.

Step 4. Compare those results across multiple videos.

If a language consistently underperforms from video to video, consider dropping it — or investigate what you can do to make content in that language more appealing.

If this analytics approach feels overwhelming, just start by translating into all 100+ languages. You literally cannot go wrong.

Telegram message from a user: a million views, 2.75% of them from subtitles, about $170 extra at $6 per thousand views

The Language Core: Always-On Translations

Blogger: So what are the most popular languages it's always worth translating titles, descriptions, and subtitles into?

Creator Tools: Here's the essential core:

Russian
Ukrainian
Serbian
French
Portuguese
Spanish
Italian
English
German
Hebrew
Arabic
Vietnamese
Japanese
Korean
Chinese
Indonesian
Hindi
Turkish

These languages form the foundation. Beyond this core, Creator Tools supports 100+ languages — each additional translation increases your chances of reaching millions of new viewers.

95% of YouTube users don't speak Russian, and 80% don't speak English. Two languages already get you 25% coverage. Can you afford to ignore the other 75%?

Let Analytics Guide You

The Creator Tools translation service has built-in analytics that automatically highlights the most popular languages based on real usage data from across our user base. Recommendations are driven by actual viewership — not guesswork.

Translating your videos can dramatically expand your audience and grow your channel's reach on YouTube. Creator Tools makes it easy to do at scale, across 100+ languages, in just a few clicks.

Choosing Translation Languages: FAQ

Which languages should I translate my YouTube videos into first?

Start with the core: Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, English, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, Hindi and Turkish.

How do I find the best languages for my own channel?

Translate several videos into all available languages, then compare retention and views per language in YouTube Analytics. Drop the languages that underperform from video to video.