Video Thumbnail Localization: Translate the Text on Thumbnails and Covers

YouTube says translated titles and descriptions can appear in search results for viewers who speak those languages. It also says that, on average, over two-thirds of a creator's watch time comes from outside their home area (opens in a new tab).

Multi-language audio (opens in a new tab) lets you add dubbed audio tracks to a single video, and the track plays in the viewer's preferred language by default. YouTube reported that creators who uploaded these tracks saw over 25% of their watch time come from views in a non-primary language (opens in a new tab) (figure as of July 2025).

Once the title and audio are translated, an English-only thumbnail is the last part a Spanish or Japanese viewer still can't read. It's also the first thing they see. For long-form videos, YouTube Help documents a way to upload a separate thumbnail for each language, though YouTube described the feature as a pilot with a select group of creators (opens in a new tab) in September 2025, so it may not appear on every channel.

Read the YouTube thumbnail translator page for the upload steps in YouTube Studio, and the TikTok cover translator page for covers that come from a video frame.

StoreLocale works on the still image, not the video. A vision model finds each line of text on the thumbnail, a language model translates it, and an image model repaints the translated words in place, aiming to match the original font, weight and color.

• Free steps: text detection and translation cost 0 credits, so you can check every translation before paying for anything.
• Repaint cost: 1 credit for Standard (1K), 2 for Pro (2K) or 4 for Ultra (4K) per image. Credit packs are one-time purchases with no expiry, and a bring-your-own OpenRouter or Gemini key uses 0 platform credits. See pricing.
• Kept as-is: brand marks and acronyms such as 4K, HD and PRO stay untranslated, and you can edit any translated line per language.
• Re-exports: a localized image whose inputs haven't changed is reused without a new charge.

Example: a cooking channel has a thumbnail that reads "5-MINUTE PASTA" and wants Spanish, German and Japanese versions. Detect and translate all three, shorten any headline that no longer fits, then run the repaint and export three PNGs. Resize each one back to 16:9 in an image editor before adding it to that language in YouTube Studio.

• Meaning: ask a native speaker to read short, punchy headlines. Wordplay and slang rarely translate word for word.
• Fit: translations change length, so check that the headline still reads at thumbnail size. The guide on text expansion by language covers what to expect.
• Artwork: the repaint is generative, so confirm that faces, logos and product shots are unchanged.
• Media areas: StoreLocale leaves regions it detects as media artwork, such as posters or video frames, untouched. Text over those areas can stay in the source language, so confirm every headline actually changed.

• It doesn't translate audio, captions, titles or descriptions. Add those with YouTube's translation tools (opens in a new tab).
• It doesn't edit video files. For covers picked from a frame, you put the localized still back into the video in your own editor.