Taking advantage of automatic dubbing in foreign languages to expand your potential audience: this is the promise of the new tool deployed by YouTube for content creators. Google’s video platform offers, via YouTube Studio, the automated creation of audio tracks complementary to those of the original language of the video.
« We’re starting with hundreds of thousands of monetized channels focused on knowledge and information, and will soon expand to other types of content “, affirms the platform. Eligible creators will see the option appear in their YouTube Studio interface. Automatic dubbing is activated by default, but it is possible to deactivate it, or to configure a check before publishing option, to check the dubbed versions before being put online.
On the visitor side, dubbing is materialized by a new option in the settings menu of a video (accessible via the toothed wheel). Called Audio Tracks, it allows you to navigate between the original language and the translations. A warning, stating that “ audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated » is added to the video description field.
Dubbing currently works on a limited range of languages. It is thus possible to translate from English into French, German, Italian, Japanese, Hindi, Indonesian, Portuguese and Spanish. Each of these languages can, in the other direction, benefit from an automated translation into English.
« It is important to keep in mind that this technology is still relatively newtakes care to indicate YouTube. We work hard to make it as accurate as possible, but sometimes the translation may not be completely accurate or the dubbed voice may not accurately represent the original speaker. »
Automatic translation illustrates, for example, the difficulty of managing differences in rhythm, with an English voice which sometimes seems accelerated to match the flow of a talkative French speaker.
