How to translate Bilibili videos to English (and English videos to Chinese)

Why Bilibili videos are awkward to translate

Bilibili is one of China's largest video platforms, full of tutorials, reviews, and creator content that rarely travels beyond a Chinese-speaking audience. Going the other way — bringing English videos to a Bilibili audience — has the same friction.

Manually downloading, transcribing, translating, and re-voicing a Bilibili video is slow. A tool that ingests the link and dubs it directly removes most of that work.

Translate a Bilibili video step by step

The process is the same whether you are translating out of or into Chinese:

• Paste the Bilibili link (or upload a file, or paste a YouTube, Twitch, or X link).
• Choose the target language — for example Chinese to English, or English to Chinese.
• WaveShift transcribes, translates, and clones the speaker's voice.
• It mixes the dubbed speech back over the original background audio.
• Playback streams within minutes, and you can fix any single line.

Both directions, and beyond Chinese and English

WaveShift is not limited to one direction. You can bring a Chinese Bilibili video to an English audience, or localize an English video into Chinese for Bilibili. Beyond Chinese and English, it supports Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Italian.

Keep the creator's voice and the music

Bilibili content often leans on the creator's personality and on background music. WaveShift clones the speaker's voice so the translated version still sounds like them, and separates speech from background audio so the music and effects stay intact.

Which Bilibili links work, and what to check first

WaveShift accepts Bilibili video pages (BV or av links), b23.tv short links and live-room links. Pasting the page URL is enough; there is nothing to download first.

A working link is not a licence. Bilibili has its own rules for reposting other people's videos, and a dubbed copy is still a repost: dub videos you made, or ones whose creator has authorized translation and re-publication, and credit the original where the platform expects it.

• Test a short, representative clip first. Fast, dense dialogue is where translated lines run longest.
• Check names and in-jokes. Bilibili content leans on community slang and references that machine translation flattens; correct them with a subtitle edit after the dub finishes.
• Text burned into the picture — hard subtitles, on-screen titles — is not translated. Plan a separate cover or caption for it.
• If a link is rejected, upload a video file you are authorized to process; uploads follow the same pipeline.
• For Bilibili, the Chrome Web Store extension does not read website cookies. If a video requires your signed-in session, check the download version on the extension page or use an authorized file. Bangumi episode pages remain unsupported.

Translating Bilibili anime and animation into English

Two different things sit under “Bilibili anime”. Licensed series in the bangumi section (episode pages under bilibili.com/bangumi/) are studios’ copyrighted works, distributed under licences that usually cover specific regions. Uploads in the animation section — original shorts, fan animation, MMD and hand-drawn pieces — are ordinary videos with a BV number, owned by whoever made them.

WaveShift, including its Chrome extension, accepts ordinary video pages (BV or av numbers), b23.tv short links and live rooms. Bangumi episode pages are not supported. If you only want to watch a licensed series in English, look for an official release available in your region, such as on Bilibili’s international site, bilibili.tv, rather than making your own copy.

For an animation you made, or one you are authorized to translate, the workflow is the same as for any Bilibili video. Three things deserve an early listen:

• Character voices. Exaggerated, high-pitched or heavily processed voices are harder to clone than natural speech, so check each main character in the first minutes.
• Many characters. Speaker detection relies on audible differences between voices, so two characters voiced alike may be treated as one speaker. Review a scene where characters alternate quickly.
• Songs and effects. Dialogue over an opening theme, insert song or dense effects is where separating speech from music is hardest. Danmaku comments are not part of the video file, so they are not translated.

Tips for cross-border creators

A few habits make cross-border posting smoother:

• Review one representative segment before processing a long video.
• Use single-line re-dubbing to fix names, terms, or any awkward line.
• WaveShift holds the source duration as an estimate, then settles on dubbed audio actually delivered; the target language does not add a separate multiplier.

Listen first, then test your own material

These are the published WaveShift homepage samples: one English source and its German dub. Use them to hear the voice and language; processing times come from the separate production study. For a buying decision, run the same authorized excerpt, target language and voice mode in each candidate tool.

The sample does not predict every recording: overlap, noise and source language can change the result. Purchased minutes do not expire; source media is temporary, so export before the task’s displayed expiry.