YouTube breaches language barriers by offering auto translation of subtitles

Written on 2nd November 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

YouTube is making some serious efforts to breach the language barriers we Europeans face on a daily basis. I’d love to watch some interesting Italian documentary on YouTube, yet my knowledge of the Italian language is limited to the words needed for ordering food or drinks. The Google-owned video giant now offers a solution.

If the person who has uploaded a video also added captions, YouTube adds real-time machine translation. From the YouTube blog:

To get a translation for your preferred language, move the mouse over the bottom-right arrow, and then over the small triangle next to the CC (or subtitle) icon, to see the captions menu. Click on the “Translate…” button and then you will be given a choice of many different languages.

The machine translation is far from perfect and you’ll have to make an effort to understand what the Italian man is saying. Yet it’s a good first step which might inspire YouTube users to translate more videos.

captions, language, subtitles, translation, World Languages, youtube

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EUfeeds: what are European journalists writing about?

Written on 22nd June 2008                                                                                                              0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

When you favorite blog or news site has a slow day, you might wanna turn to different news sources. A good alternative is Eufeeds, this site is fed by 500 hundred feeds from European newspapers. People from 28 different countries can check what their nations’ journalists are writing about.

When you see a headline that arouses some curiosity, the article opens in a fancy Ajax layer – you know the type: inner screen pop-up that fades the original site away. A selection of countries is easily made with the collection of flags in the top.

There’s one minor problem though: most Europeans speak only two languages – their native one and some English. Of course some exceptions can be made, in Dutch high schools for example, students can learn French, German, and Spanish as well. But for most Europeans, an integrated translation tool would be essential.

When you think of it, this page is just a Netvibes universe on steroids. Or an European Alltop rip-off. However, when you’re in the need of some news, and you need it fast, eufeeds.eu is the place to go to.

eufeeds, Europe, languages, News, Newspapers, World Languages

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