Short Drama Script Localizer

Why generic translation tanks short drama retention

A plain translation of "You're fired." "Sir, I'm your wife." into Brazilian Portuguese loses the status flip because "você" is both formal and informal. A human localizer would know to use "você" for "You're fired" (informal, dismissive) and "senhor" for "Sir" (formal, status-aware). Most AI translators don't make that switch. This tool does — and flags when the source hook won't carry across (so you can rewrite the hook for that market instead of shipping a dud).

What the tool actually changes

• Honorifics & registers — señor/señora, senhor/senhora, Pak/Bu, sir/ma'am — matched per dialog line, not per script.
• Cultural anchors — currency (USD → MXN / BRL / IDR), food (coffee → café con leche / café com leite / kopi tubruk), and family structures (grandmother → abuela / vovó / nenek) swapped so jokes still land.
• Hook preservation — if a 3-word English hook balloons to 7 Spanish words, the tool compresses or swaps the hook structure entirely.
• Caption timing — matches the shot-list time codes so Spanish captions don't overshoot the 3-second window.
• Forbidden phrases — flags phrases that work in English but risk demonetization on regional TikTok (e.g. religion slurs in Indonesia, gang references in Mexico).

Markets where localization moves the needle most

Why DeepL or Google Translate won't do

If you've tried localizing your short drama with DeepL, Google Translate, or even ChatGPT's translation prompt, you've already seen the failure modes. Here is what is structurally different about short-drama localization, and why a generic translator can't do it:

When NOT to localize — and just rewrite

Some English short drama tropes don't survive translation. The "CEO-janitor hidden identity" trope is strong in US/EU but underperforms in LATAM, where family-status reversals (matriarch / inheritance) hit harder. In those cases, the tool suggests a rewrite brief instead of a translation — essentially a new hook built on a trope that localizes. You then run that rewrite back through the 3-Episode Plotter.

Export formats

You can export as: TikTok-ready caption text (burn-in style, line-breaked for vertical screens), SRT file per language (for YouTube Shorts uploads), or plain dialog for re-recording with AI voice tools. The tool also exports a continuity checklist per language — names, food, places, currency — so your editor doesn't accidentally mix "pesos" with "real" in a LATAM cut.

Where this fits

Localization is the last step before render. After your hook, 3-episode arc and shot list are locked, run the final script through the Localizer to produce 3–4 regional versions. ReelShort writers call this "the localization pass" — and it's the single highest-leverage move for squeezing 3× reach out of one script.