Fix garbled Arabic subtitles
Arabic subtitles showing up as العربية, disconnected letters, or empty boxes? They were saved in the old Windows-1256 Arabic encoding and your player is reading them as UTF-8. Drop the file in below to restore the text.
Fixing a specific language? Cyrillic / Russian · Arabic
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Why Arabic subtitles turn into gibberish
Arabic subtitle files from older sources are commonly saved in Windows-1256, the legacy Arabic code page, instead of UTF-8. When a modern player reads those bytes as UTF-8 it produces mojibake — strings like العربية instead of العربية — or, if the font cannot map them, empty boxes.
Re-decoding the original bytes as Windows-1256 and exporting UTF-8 fixes it. This page pre-selects Windows-1256 — drop the file in, confirm the preview shows readable Arabic, and download the clean UTF-8 copy. Because Arabic is right-to-left, also make sure your player's subtitle font supports Arabic: VLC and mpv do; some basic players and older TVs do not.
Not sure which encoding your file is in? Detect the encoding first → Want the background? Why subtitle characters get garbled →
FAQ
Why do my Arabic subtitles show ال or boxes?
The file was saved in Windows-1256, the legacy Arabic encoding, but your player reads it as UTF-8, so the bytes are decoded with the wrong table. Re-decoding from Windows-1256 to UTF-8 restores the Arabic text. Empty boxes usually mean the same thing plus a font that lacks Arabic glyphs.
The letters are readable but disconnected or reversed — is that encoding?
That is usually a rendering issue, not encoding. Arabic is right-to-left and cursive; if the encoding is already correct but the shaping looks wrong, switch to a player with good Arabic support such as VLC or mpv, and pick a font that includes Arabic.
Will this change the timings or wording?
No. Only the character encoding is converted to UTF-8. Timings, line breaks, and the words themselves are left exactly as they were.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything runs in your browser in JavaScript. The file never leaves your device and the page works offline.