Cannot get translated captions

[usilitel]

I can get original captions, but cannot get translated captions.
I am sure that the reason is not in IP-address, because I tested it from different IPs.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi

video_id = 'QOGxXBO_2ig'

try:
    ytt_api = YouTubeTranscriptApi()

    transcript_list = ytt_api.list(video_id)
    transcript = transcript_list.find_transcript(['en'])
    transcript_fetched = transcript.fetch()
    for snippet in transcript_fetched:
        print(snippet.text)

    translated_transcript = transcript.translate('de')
    translated_transcript_fetched = translated_transcript.fetch()
    for snippet in translated_transcript_fetched:
        print(snippet.text)

except Exception as e:
    print(f"error: {e}")

Which Python version are you using?

Python 3.13

Which version of youtube-transcript-api are you using?

youtube-transcript-api 1.2.4

Expected behavior

Script should print texts of:

1. original captions (in English language).
2. translated captions (in Deutch language).

Actual behaviour

Script prints texts of original captions (in English language), but does not print texts of translated captions (in Deutch language).
Instead I receive the following error message:

Could not retrieve a transcript for the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOGxXBO_2ig! This is most likely caused by:

YouTube is blocking requests from your IP. This usually is due to one of the following reasons:
- You have done too many requests and your IP has been blocked by YouTube
- You are doing requests from an IP belonging to a cloud provider (like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, etc.). Unfortunately, most IPs from cloud providers are blocked by YouTube.

Ways to work around this are explained in the "Working around IP bans" section of the README (https://github.com/jdepoix/youtube-transcript-api?tab=readme-ov-file#working-around-ip-bans-requestblocked-or-ipblocked-exception).


If you are sure that the described cause is not responsible for this error and that a transcript should be retrievable, please create an issue at https://github.com/jdepoix/youtube-transcript-api/issues. Please add which version of youtube_transcript_api you are using and provide the information needed to replicate the error. Also make sure that there are no open issues which already describe your problem!

[jdepoix]

Hi @usilitel,

thank you for reporting!

Indeed, it does seem that YouTube has added some bot-protection measurements to the API calls that retrieve the translated transcripts, which cannot easily be worked around using proxies. I am currently investigating this, but I cannot promise a quick fix here, as finding new workarounds can be quite tricky.

For now: I've noticed that you can increase the likelihood of your translate request not being blocked by adding a sleep of 30-60 seconds between the your first list/fetch calls and the fetching of the translated transcript. However, this doesn't always work and it obviously slows down your application by a lot, so this is far from being a proper solution.

[usilitel]

Hi @usilitel,

thank you for reporting!

Indeed, it does seem that YouTube has added some bot-protection measurements to the API calls that retrieve the translated transcripts, which cannot easily be worked around using proxies. I am currently investigating this, but I cannot promise a quick fix here, as finding new workarounds can be quite tricky.

For now: I've noticed that you can increase the likelihood of your translate request not being blocked by adding a sleep of 30-60 seconds between the your first list/fetch calls and the fetching of the translated transcript. However, this doesn't always work and it obviously slows down your application by a lot, so this is far from being a proper solution.

Yes, time.sleep(60) helped.

Possible workaround without time.sleep:
Step 1 - Get original captions: transcript = transcript_list.find_transcript(['en'])
Step 2 - Change IP (via Webshare).
Step 3 - Get translated captions: translated_transcript = transcript.translate('de')

This is untested, just a concept.

[jdepoix]

@usilitel that doesn't work unfortunately

[usilitel]

@usilitel that doesn't work unfortunately

I found solution using yt-dlp:
yt-dlp/yt-dlp#13770 (comment)

If the cookies.txt file doesn't exist, a 429 error occurs, and the cookies.txt file is saved.
You must wait 60 seconds before second attempt (otherwise, you'll get another 429 error).
If the cookies.txt file already exists, there's no need to wait; the subtitles are downloaded immediately.

I hope it is possible to copy this solution to youtube-transcript-api.

[jdepoix]

Thanks for reporting back @usilitel. I've also noticed that authenticated calls do not have this problem. However, the authentication feature has also recently been broken by some other changes that YouTube did, so it can't be used for now. Even if it was fixed, I wouldn't consider it a good solution. Whenever using authenticated requests you run the risk of the associated account being banned (especially when retrieving transcripts at a larger scale), so I would prefer a solution that doesn't require authentication. For the time being I am not sure if there is one that works without PO-tokens, which would require a JS runtime (which also is why yt-dlp requires a JS runtime now) and I would like to avoid that overhead.