Fix garbled subtitle characters
Repair subtitles that show strange symbols instead of accented letters, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese or Korean text, and save them as UTF-8.
Move subtitles by a fixed amount when every line is off by the same delay.
Seconds (2.5), milliseconds (1500ms) or a time (00:00:02,500). Subtitles appear too early → Later.
For subtitles that drift. Pick two cues far apart and enter when each should appear.
Rescale times when the subtitle was made for a video with a different frame rate.
The file open now is part 1 / language 1.
Cues
Save options
Output preview
How to fix garbled subtitle characters
- Open the garbled file. Drop the subtitle file on the tool. The detected encoding is shown next to the file name.
- Check the text. Read a few lines in the cue list. If letters still look wrong, pick the language’s encoding from the Encoding menu.
- Save as UTF-8. Download in any format. Add a BOM only if your TV needs it.
About this tool
Garbled subtitles (“mojibake”) are almost never broken files. The text was saved in an older, language-specific encoding — Windows-1251 for Russian, Windows-1250 for Polish or Czech, GBK for Chinese — and your player reads it as something else. Reading the same bytes with the right encoding brings the text back perfectly.
When you open a file, SubTweak checks for a byte-order mark and valid UTF-8, then scores the common legacy encodings by how natural the resulting letters are for each language. The detected encoding appears in the file bar; if the text still looks wrong, choose another one from the list and the file is re-read instantly.
Files are always saved as UTF-8, which every modern player supports. A few older TVs and players only recognize UTF-8 when the file starts with a byte-order mark — tick “UTF-8 with BOM” in the save options for those.
FAQ
Why do my subtitles show é or è?
That is a UTF-8 file being read as Windows-1252. Most players have a subtitle encoding setting; set it to UTF-8, or open and re-save the file here.
Why do my subtitles show question marks or boxes?
Either the player lacks a font for that script or the file was decoded with the wrong encoding. Re-save as UTF-8 here and check the player’s subtitle font.
Which encoding should I choose for Arabic or Hebrew?
Arabic subtitles are usually Windows-1256 and Hebrew Windows-1255. Auto-detect normally finds them; choose them manually if it does not.