AI could end foreign-language subtitles • Hacker News Board

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#121

Post by vagrantJin » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

aeturnum wrote: 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…

I watch a lot of foreign films and dubbed version misses a lot of nuance - complexity of spoken language, inflection, depth.

So maybe I watch the kind of stuff where that kind of performace is required. Maybe it has certain genres or mediums where dubs work well like Romcoms or Marvel movies.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#122

Post by zarmin » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

Why is this article written in bullet points?

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#123

Post by thfuran » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:10 AM UTC

acchow wrote: post #75

tlbsofware wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Netflix in particular seems to love defaulting to 5.1 tracks when it shouldn't.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#124

Post by aeturnum » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:11 AM UTC

marcan_42 wrote: post #111

aeturnum wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also love to a more responsive subtitle format! I've seen some really wonderful custom jobs where people use different subtitle colors for different speakers, place subtitles near the speaker in the frame, etc. I think there is a ton of room for improving the expressiveness of the medium.

The format exists, it's called ASS. It can do things like this: https://youtu.be/djrJP_Pi03U https://youtu.be/R3shsgKbd_M?t=12s That's a pure text format; no bitmaps involved, just markup and TTF fonts. It can do vector shapes and perspective positioning. These are somewhat overdone examples, but one more common nice use case is literally translating signs on buildings, objects and such, seamlessly, while preserving…

Oh wow! That is amazing. The examples I was describing were in anime so I have no doubt they were in ASS as well. Very cool.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#125

Post by jeroenhd » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:14 AM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #114

I want the opposite: subtitles on everything, just not directly on the picture. Opera houses have subtitles on a separate text-only screen (or screens embedded in seats). Why can’t I have a device like that at home? A narrow subtitle display that sits below the TV, sort of like the Touch Bar on the previous-generation MacBooks. I’d buy that.

There's this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.aud...

You can install it on your phone and it'll subtitle your life if you can find a good place to put it down. It's meant for the deaf and hard of hearing (hence features like visual alarms) but in my experience it'll transcribe stuff that's being said pretty well as long as the mic catches the audio you want to hear. Perhaps it would be even better with a quality (bluetooth? 3.5mm?) external microphone.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#126

Post by ncpa-cpl » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:14 AM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #57

commandlinefan wrote: post #39

Earlier 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.

I also use them regularly in my native language! Very helpful in noisy environments.

And very helpful for slang too. I speak Spanish well, but I always add subtitles in English or other language in case I miss a word of two from another Spanish variety.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#127

Post by ncpa-cpl » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:15 AM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #123

acchow wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And Netflix in particular seems to love defaulting to 5.1 tracks when it shouldn't.

Diney Plus too

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#128

Post by kpozin » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:18 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #83

testermelon wrote: post #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.

I'm pretty sure it's also a Russian thing. In the case of English, the orthography is difficult, a large proportion of people are functionally illiterate, and even more have a tough enough time reading that subtitles just go by too quickly.

I have a difficult time imagining that Russian speakers prefer the dubbed content they're offered. Most of the Russian dubs I've seen have one male voice actor doing all the characters (or with an additional female voice actor doing all the female characters, if you're lucky) with no attempts at timing, emotion, or intonation. The dub track is played on top of all the other audio, instead of being properly mixed in to replace the original dialogue track.

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#129

Post by Morgawr » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:35 AM UTC

throwaway675309 wrote: post #101

jonpurdy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there's a lot of gatekeeping about this. People - perhaps rightfully so - believe subtitled versions to be more ... "pure" than dubbed versions. Well, they are more pure than dubbed versions. There is so much nuance and tone in the original language that is either left out or changed in the dub. Not to mention word order (subject-verb-object in English/Chinese, subject-object-verb in Japanese/Korean) that f…

Yes... but all that nuance and tone is largely lost on 90% of the foreign market who can't understand the native language in the first place. And for the record, Chinese also makes heavy use of SOV, eg 他們昨天到韓國去了。

And Japanese also makes extensive use of SVO or OVS and similar, eg 本はよんだ、君が？

Re: AI could end foreign-language subtitles

#130

Post by the_af » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 3:38 AM UTC

I like listening to the original audio of foreign movies and it's partly how I learned English, and how I pick up random words from languages I can't really speak.

I also respect actors and actresses enough to appreciate their performance includes their original voices.

I'm a fast reader and subtitles are like a second nature to me, to the point I don't "remember" having read them (likewise I sometimes don't remember if I read a novel in English or Spanish unless a particular turn of phrase caught my attention).

About the only thing I agree with is that dubbing (barring some honorable exceptions) sucks. I did listen to a part of La Casa de Papel's English dub -- the horror!

In short: do not want this.