I speak a minority language that is primarily in spoken form by native speakers, very limited in number. I wonder, how AI technologies can be utilized to enhance the content or auto generating speech. I find it hard. Plus, the economic incentives for doing this work is highly limiting because of a small / limited user base.
AI could end foreign-language subtitles
71–80 of 221 posts
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#72This 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…
Personally I would like if someone could use AI to enhance the voices of the actors, I find a lot of movies like to use loud ominous music while the characters are casually talking in a soft voice. Really drives me insane, and placing subtitles helps this problem but it creates a new one, I tend to get distracted by the subtitles and find myself not watching the movie
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#73This 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…
It would be hilarious to see famous actors deepfaked into speaking foreign languages in a feature film.
I suspect it simply won't work - translating accurately is really hard, but translating elegantly is frequently impossible. Some things are just easier/punchier/funnier to say in language A than B
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Nah, it's better than that. But it doesn't recognize sentences, and a word appears at a time.
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#75This 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…
Personally I would like if someone could use AI to enhance the voices of the actors, I find a lot of movies like to use loud ominous music while the characters are casually talking in a soft voice. Really drives me insane, and placing subtitles helps this problem but it creates a new one, I tend to get distracted by the subtitles and find myself not watching the movie
This could be an issue with your audio mixing in your particular speaker setup. Often times trying to play audio meant for surround systems (5.1, 7.1, etc) on stereo channels results in a poor audio mix.
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#76I think it's a great option but their is an art to translations. This applies especially to books (I'm reading an English translation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_Greek which is very well done) and while you do have less dialog with movies, I wonder if some subtleties will be missed, particularly around humour.
This is something that bothers the crap out of me watching recent shows on Netflix or similar that come with official subtitles, and that is that they're often crap. You're spending millions on actors and sets and directors and visual effects and editing and everything else around the production, but the subtitles are some kind of shitty after-thought doled out to the lowest bidding subcontractor?
In Sweden, everything foreign is subtitled, and as a result of the vast quantity of subtitles produced, the quality is high, so I've grown up expecting good quality subtitles. And then I watch something on HBO or whatever, and the subtitles are just bad. Clearly not proofread, clearly done by someone who didn't watch the thing, and just translated the written material as is.
And the art side of subtitles is often neglected or plain just not understood. Timing is really important, which people understand when it comes to for example dialogue timing to make a joke land. But then the subtitles are shit, and ruin the joke because the subtitle timing is off, when you could have had good subtitles that worked with the material, preserving the timing!
Why aren't studios and networks investing as much in the subtitles as the rest of the production?
Yes, 95% of subtitles are easy to make, there's a single unambiguous way to translate what's being said into your target language, and by syncing it to the audio it's gonna be good enough. But some things are hard to translate, because there simply doesn't exist a 1:1 mapping between every language, despite Google assuming the world works like that.
But YouTube's auto-caption thing is garbage. It's enough to sort-of kinda make out what is being said, but it's often complete garble, and there's zero understanding of good timing or the art side of subtitling.
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#77I think it's a great option but their is an art to translations. This applies especially to books (I'm reading an English translation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorba_the_Greek which is very well done) and while you do have less dialog with movies, I wonder if some subtleties will be missed, particularly around humour.
This is something that bothers the crap out of me watching recent shows on Netflix or similar that come with official subtitles, and that is that they're often crap. You're spending millions on actors and sets and directors and visual effects and editing and everything else around the production, but the subtitles are some kind of shitty after-thought doled out to the lowest bidding subcontractor? In Sweden, everythi…
Everyone understands that acting, directing, editing, and sound editing is Art, it's creative work, you need humans to do it.
But somehow, subtitles are Not Art? It's somehow not creative work?
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
many reasons to use them: - family is sleeping so you keep volume low - hard to understand accents or lingo - bad audio mixing or bad audio systems that muffle words and rest of the sound
- You're a euro-, arab-, and/or, asia-phile (I'm in the U.S.) and the sound of the language further transports you to those parts of the world.
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#79This 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…
Totally agree, I often much prefer subtitles to dubbing as I can hear the original voice artist's tone of expression as it was intended to be.
Also, languages are bridges, not barriers, by exposing yourself more to another language you will learn it if you don't reject it.
Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles
#80This 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…
I am very surprised more people watched the dubbed version of Squid Game over the subtitles. I saw a friend watching the dubbed version and to me it didn't "preserve the original performances" as you say. Surprised subtitles are a barrier, I enjoy them personally, but I guess they have the data to know.
I have tested out services that translate your "own voice" to another language and it was pretty cool, although I couldn't tell if the translation was quality. Automated translation isn't a solved problem, and this seems more of an issue than the tone of voice.