New Youtube feature: crowdsourcing subtitles – anyone can submit - improves automatic captions, for non-native English speakers, global audience, hearing-impaired, preferences for reading, extra metadata for search engines
YouTube has a new feature that allows regular users to contribute subtitles and captions to any video after a YouTuber opts into this feature.
**Broken podcast**
I don’t know if I’m remembering correctly, but I think that Felix discussed preferring subtitles when watching videos in one of the Broken podcasts.
He mentioned that after turning the captions on, somebody gave a funny look like, “What. You have a problem understanding British English”.
At the beginning of Felix’s Game of Thrones playthrough today, he asked why subtitles aren’t the standard, so that leads me to believe that subtitles were in fact discussed on the Broken podcast.
**New YouTube Features Unveiled at VidCon 2014**
>5 Awesome New YouTube Features Unveiled at VidCon 2014
> Fan-Submitted Subtitles
> One of YouTube’s greatest strengths is its ability to help creators reach audiences all over the world.
> Unfortunately, language remains a barrier.
> While some types of content, like music, can cross the language divide, most can’t.
>Multilingual fans will often post translations in the comments of popular videos for the benefit of others.
> Now, YouTube has formalized this spontaneous process, allowing fans to submit translations that can be displayed as subtitles within the video.
> YouTube’s hyper-engaged fan audience is one of the site’s greatest strengths, and mobilizing them to help creators go global is a huge advantage.
5 Awesome New YouTube Features Unveiled at VidCon 2014 | New Media Rockstars
**Tyler Oakley crowdsourcing subtitles video**
Tyler Oakley recently made a video talking about crowdsourcing subtitles, and the benefits.
This was done after a deaf YouTuber made a video to further raise awareness for captions.
Tyler was trying to trend #hearmeout on Twitter.
>Dear YouTube: HEAR ME OUT | Tyler Oakley
> If you want to contribute closed captioning in a language other than English:
> -go to the video you want to contribute to
> -a YouTube video's URL typically looks like: "www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2cBTlLCKjU"
> -replace "watch" in the video URL with "timedtext_video"
> -now the YouTube video's URL should look like: "www.youtube.com/timedtext_video?v=V2cBTlLCKjU"
> -click "Add subtitles or CC" and then select the language which you would like to contribute. If the language for which you would like to contribute does not appear, use the search bar to find it and then translate from English to whichever language you've selected.
**BBC news story:**
> Tyler Oakley adds subtitles after vlogger campaign
Tyler Oakley adds subtitles after vlogger campaign - BBC Newsbeat
**Benefits of subtitles**
Helping the hearing-impaired and disability community seems obvious at first, but there are other benefits too.
An adequate English transcription can help those that don’t speak English natively.
An acceptable foreign language translation and transcription helps cross language barriers, and allows people of other languages to discover the videos.
As Felix mentioned, many adept English speakers still prefer having subtitles.
Sometimes you don’t clearly hear what was said, or you simply prefer reading.
It’s mentioned on the YouTube Creator site that close captioned videos are more searchable on search engines.
I know that when I put search terms on YouTube, I might not get a video with the search term in the title, but it might appear in the lengthier video description.
A fully subtitled video would provide even more information
**YouTube Creator site**
> Best practices
>
> YouTube is a global platform that reaches billions of people worldwide, so it’s likely part of your audience may speak a different language than you.
> Adding closed captions (CC) and subtitles to your videos can help your content appeal to a global audience including viewers with hearing impairments or foreign-language speakers.
>
> Connect to your audience with closed captions (CC)
>
> Closed captions and subtitles provide an on-screen reading guide for those viewers who find it difficult to hear what’s happening on-screen or who speak a different language.
>
> Subtitles
>
> Subtitles not only make your work accessible to a wider audience, they can also be indexed by YouTube and act as additional metadata to help your video get discovered more often.
>
> Ask your community to help you translate your video’s subtitles.
>
> Reach out to international friends who might be able to translate your videos.
> Create a video inviting your fans to submit subtitles and closed captions to your videos.
> Spread the word about your video and invite contacts to create subtitles in the languages they speak.
>
> After you add closed captions and subtitles, be sure to let your audience know they are available.
> You can promote closed captions (CC) with annotations, in your video description, or with a call to action in the video.
Reach a global audience - YouTube
**Improves automatic captions**
Lastly, speech recognition improves and learns by comparing to correct text and data.
Speech recognition gets better for services such as Android voice search, and YouTube’s automatic closed captioning.
You can probably get a positive feedback loop going: good automatic YouTube captions creates less errors for users to fix, which makes the user contribution process easier, which results in more submissions, which means that there is more correction data to learn from, which further improves the YouTube automatic captions.
I think that subtitle crowdsourcing is worth opting into and/or mentioning in the future.
Thanks.
YouTube has a new feature that allows regular users to contribute subtitles and captions to any video after a YouTuber opts into this feature.
**Broken podcast**
I don’t know if I’m remembering correctly, but I think that Felix discussed preferring subtitles when watching videos in one of the Broken podcasts.
He mentioned that after turning the captions on, somebody gave a funny look like, “What. You have a problem understanding British English”.
At the beginning of Felix’s Game of Thrones playthrough today, he asked why subtitles aren’t the standard, so that leads me to believe that subtitles were in fact discussed on the Broken podcast.
**New YouTube Features Unveiled at VidCon 2014**
>5 Awesome New YouTube Features Unveiled at VidCon 2014
> Fan-Submitted Subtitles
> One of YouTube’s greatest strengths is its ability to help creators reach audiences all over the world.
> Unfortunately, language remains a barrier.
> While some types of content, like music, can cross the language divide, most can’t.
>Multilingual fans will often post translations in the comments of popular videos for the benefit of others.
> Now, YouTube has formalized this spontaneous process, allowing fans to submit translations that can be displayed as subtitles within the video.
> YouTube’s hyper-engaged fan audience is one of the site’s greatest strengths, and mobilizing them to help creators go global is a huge advantage.
5 Awesome New YouTube Features Unveiled at VidCon 2014 | New Media Rockstars
**Tyler Oakley crowdsourcing subtitles video**
Tyler Oakley recently made a video talking about crowdsourcing subtitles, and the benefits.
This was done after a deaf YouTuber made a video to further raise awareness for captions.
Tyler was trying to trend #hearmeout on Twitter.
>Dear YouTube: HEAR ME OUT | Tyler Oakley
> If you want to contribute closed captioning in a language other than English:
> -go to the video you want to contribute to
> -a YouTube video's URL typically looks like: "www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2cBTlLCKjU"
> -replace "watch" in the video URL with "timedtext_video"
> -now the YouTube video's URL should look like: "www.youtube.com/timedtext_video?v=V2cBTlLCKjU"
> -click "Add subtitles or CC" and then select the language which you would like to contribute. If the language for which you would like to contribute does not appear, use the search bar to find it and then translate from English to whichever language you've selected.
**BBC news story:**
> Tyler Oakley adds subtitles after vlogger campaign
Tyler Oakley adds subtitles after vlogger campaign - BBC Newsbeat
**Benefits of subtitles**
Helping the hearing-impaired and disability community seems obvious at first, but there are other benefits too.
An adequate English transcription can help those that don’t speak English natively.
An acceptable foreign language translation and transcription helps cross language barriers, and allows people of other languages to discover the videos.
As Felix mentioned, many adept English speakers still prefer having subtitles.
Sometimes you don’t clearly hear what was said, or you simply prefer reading.
It’s mentioned on the YouTube Creator site that close captioned videos are more searchable on search engines.
I know that when I put search terms on YouTube, I might not get a video with the search term in the title, but it might appear in the lengthier video description.
A fully subtitled video would provide even more information
**YouTube Creator site**
> Best practices
>
> YouTube is a global platform that reaches billions of people worldwide, so it’s likely part of your audience may speak a different language than you.
> Adding closed captions (CC) and subtitles to your videos can help your content appeal to a global audience including viewers with hearing impairments or foreign-language speakers.
>
> Connect to your audience with closed captions (CC)
>
> Closed captions and subtitles provide an on-screen reading guide for those viewers who find it difficult to hear what’s happening on-screen or who speak a different language.
>
> Subtitles
>
> Subtitles not only make your work accessible to a wider audience, they can also be indexed by YouTube and act as additional metadata to help your video get discovered more often.
>
> Ask your community to help you translate your video’s subtitles.
>
> Reach out to international friends who might be able to translate your videos.
> Create a video inviting your fans to submit subtitles and closed captions to your videos.
> Spread the word about your video and invite contacts to create subtitles in the languages they speak.
>
> After you add closed captions and subtitles, be sure to let your audience know they are available.
> You can promote closed captions (CC) with annotations, in your video description, or with a call to action in the video.
Reach a global audience - YouTube
**Improves automatic captions**
Lastly, speech recognition improves and learns by comparing to correct text and data.
Speech recognition gets better for services such as Android voice search, and YouTube’s automatic closed captioning.
You can probably get a positive feedback loop going: good automatic YouTube captions creates less errors for users to fix, which makes the user contribution process easier, which results in more submissions, which means that there is more correction data to learn from, which further improves the YouTube automatic captions.
I think that subtitle crowdsourcing is worth opting into and/or mentioning in the future.
Thanks.