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AI could end foreign-language subtitles

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31–40 of 221 posts

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#31
> More Netflix subscribers watched dubbed versions of "Squid Game" than subtitled versions.

The default of you load it is dubbed, right? That’s what it started for me. So this stat probably has more to do with the default than anything else. They’re making a weak case that this problem even needs solving.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#33
post #3

This would be a lovely option to have and I find it hilarious that anyone imagines that subtitles are some kind of problem we are trying to get out of. Adding text to movies has a huge array of advantages: it preserves the original performances, it makes the dialog accessible to people with hearing or auditory processing disabilities, they can be multiplexed in a way that audio cannot, etc. Obviously it would be wond…

Yes. It also forces people to read and allows them to be exposed to foreign languages.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#34

> More Netflix subscribers watched dubbed versions of "Squid Game" than subtitled versions. The default of you load it is dubbed, right? That’s what it started for me. So this stat probably has more to do with the default than anything else. They’re making a weak case that this problem even needs solving.

> The default of you load it is dubbed, right?

I don't think so, at least not for me.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#35
The notion that some people prefer dub over sub is not new, but it baffles me that it is to the level of urgent business concern. From what I see in other comments, is it an American thing?

We should invest in making people’s ear accustomed/used to hear other languages. It has great intercultural benefits.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#36

This will not happen for many, many years to come. That is, companies will try it, there will be some bad and ridiculous results, there will be pusheback and the tech will largely be ignored for a decade or so. Main problems will be intonation and inflection. What is a question to an English speaker is a regular sentence to a Russian. And so on. "Petabytes of data from primarily English-speaking libraries" mean jack…

I'd encourage you to listen to some cutting edge speech synthesis like Google Duplex:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijwHj2HaOT0

This is live in production today - business owners are getting calls from robots, and you can trigger it yourself with Google Assistant.

[Disclaimer: I work(ed) on Google Assistant - I'm in the process of transferring out - and have listened to some presentations about how Duplex works. It's pretty crazy technology.]

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! My perennial problem is that most Chinese TV content has excellent subtitles, but they're burned in to the videos. So if I want to watch a Chinese show with a friend who doesn't read Chinese, there's no option even for auto-translated subtitles. I've often thought of writing a script to generate subtitle files using text recognition, but haven't gotten around to it.

There's also the problem of content which doesn't have subtitles to begin with---YouTube's automatic subtitle generation is great, but could be improved and expanded to languages other than English.

> YouTubes auto mathy subtitle gen ration is grate

FTFY

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#39
post #3

This would be a lovely option to have and I find it hilarious that anyone imagines that subtitles are some kind of problem we are trying to get out of. Adding text to movies has a huge array of advantages: it preserves the original performances, it makes the dialog accessible to people with hearing or auditory processing disabilities, they can be multiplexed in a way that audio cannot, etc. Obviously it would be wond…

> subtitles are some kind of problem

Heck, they're not even limited to foreign languages. I put them on in English because I'm starting to lose my hearing now in my late 40's and if I turn up the volume loud enough that I can hear the dialogue ok, the sound effects would be so loud they'd set off the neighbor's car alarm.

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