Language technology innovation: reversioning international videos with virtual voice-overs
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News Labs
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and our digital development teams have launched an online pilot service that offers continuous video play in different languages to our global audiences.
In this joint effort with the and we are trying out the latest language technology: machine translation and computer-generated voices. The Japanese version of the pilot, available on , went live on 15 December and .
To help our language editors reversion videos more efficiently we are developing a production tool that amalgamates existing technologies and allows a single editor to generate multiple voice-overs on top of an existing video package and script. This allows our audiences to watch the same video stream in different languages. In this pilot service we begin with offering Japanese and Russian in the new year, with more languages to follow.
Language technology has come a long way. In recent years, along with the development of portable smart devices, we have seen this technology improve so fast that we now take it for granted. Features like auto-correction, predictive text, speech recognition, machine translation - and voice synthesis on smartphone personal assistants – are now commonplace.
We want to push the boundaries by creating new tools for our production workflow and innovate the way we work. Pioneering such technology in video production confirms the UK's place at the forefront of digital innovation.
The language technology has been always of great interest to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service. According to James Montgomery, Digital Development Director for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News: "The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has some of the best original journalism in the world, with correspondents around the globe. Technology like this means we can bring more of our international journalism to more people." This is especially relevant with the coming to World Service to pay for its expansion in the next few years.
This pilot is the latest in a series of digital innovations from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ’s international news services. These include the international launch of the latest Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News App, the use of messaging apps to provide specific or emergency news services, the Facebook-only 'pop-up' service in Thai; innovative filming from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ 'hexacopter' as well as hackathons in Africa.