People are travelling once again, and this means there is more user-generated video content being created. In the travel and hospitality industry, this content is very valuable as it serves as testimony or user feedback, which other tourists would like to view. When this content is translated, its value is multiplied, as it can be used in many other locales as well.
Here’s a video clip that came up for translation recently. It was created in Brazilian Portuguese (BR PT) by a tourist visiting the Parthenon in Greece. It needed to be translated to English (EN).
The video is unscripted, as is the nature of user-generated content. So, it flows very freely and quickly.
The video is shot outdoors. There’s a strong wind blowing, which adds to the noise in the background. The audio is not clear.
This clip is short, but there are many such clips being created by the minute. The demand for speedy translation of such content is increasing.
We translated the video clip using the technologies available on the Mediawen portal. Mediawen is our partner based in France. It provides cloud-based and automated audio and video localization services.
We used Mediawen’s transcription and subtitling services to convert the clip from BR PT>EN. The subtitling solution uses machine translation (MT) technology at the back end.
These services are built using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, which can learn on the go and continually improve. The solution is strong enough to decipher a conversation even when held in an outdoors, noisy setting such as this.
First, the transcript is created. A transcript refers to the written version of spoken dialog. It is created with timestamps in the same language as the original video is in.
Next, this transcript is translated into the target language using MT. In this case, it was between the Brazilian version of Portuguese and English. Mediawen’s MT engine is trained to handle translation between all the major language combinations of the world.
The portal is completely cloud-based, secure, and accessible. Clients can upload their videos, get them transcribed and subtitled in a jiffy, and then download them.
Content such as this created by tourists usually needs to be translated fast and in an affordable way because the volume of such content is high.
The quality of such translation does not need to be very high, as getting the sense of the translation is more important than getting it accurate.
Hence, automated transcription and subtitling are apt for video content of this kind. However, if the video is required for marketing, training or for some other purpose where it will be highly visible, then we can add a layer of professional review of the translated content. With this option, you will not only get translation fast and within your budget, it will also meet your quality expectations.