Translated Podcasts

Illustration generated using DALL·E 2.

In episode 23: The Translated Episode, we experimented with using speech-to-text, machine translation and speech synthesis to translate parts of the episode into Spanish and French.

Not lost in translation

What about that, you speaka da Inglese, and it comes out as French and Spanish, now how cool is that? And not just any old French and Spanish either, understandable French and Spanish. In fact, as far as I can make out from copy pasting the French and Spanish transcripts into everyone’s favourite online translation tool, pretty accurate translations.
So here we have a very tangible example of AI in action. It’s not perfect, yet, but I’m guessing it’s good enough for most people, in most situations, most of the time. Which I guess kind of sounds the warning bells for all those people who earn their living in the interpretation and translations industry; and what a vast industry it is.

Coming for the ostriches

Think about it, what isn’t translated? If it has anything to do with anything outside of the borders of the country it originates from then all documentation for all products and quite a few services, need to be translated. Of course translation companies like to talk about transliteration i.e. translating contextual meaning and remaining culturally sensitive, but if they think AI won’t be able to manage that sometime soon, they are all ostriches.
And then of course there is the world of film dubbing and subtitling. Speech to text is already very well developed so we have to imagine that is something that perhaps has already been handed over to the algorithms. But think about the amount of time that can be saved by simply using speech to text for transcribing. We do it at AI Unfiltered and it takes just minutes to transcribe 20 minutes of speech, something that would have taken quite a few hours in the past. And transcribing is soooo booooring, at least for me. So now I don’t need to do it I can spend more time writing funny articles like this, lovely.

Creative potential

But what fascinates me the most is the potential for using this technology for creative purposes.
Imagine a radio play where all the actors are actually AI algorithms. Or imagine being able to translate any book from any language into your own, or simultaneously publish a book into multiple languages. Or record your podcast in English and then put it out on the airwaves in any language you choose, absolutely brilliant and amazing all at the same time.

A game changer

This technology is a communication game changer, making translation easy , quick and affordable.
It also means, that once and for all, the term ‘lost in translation’ can be consigned to the history books.

Written by Ian Bowie