3 ms·

Universal Subtitles: Making online video accessible to all

25 points by aeurielesn 16y ago

beoba 16y ago
There are about/faq links, but they're all dead. Maybe wait until the site has been finished before posting it.
- aeurielesn 16y ago
  They don't seem to be dead for me.
  - beoba 16y ago
    Looks like they hadn't finished posting the new layout at the time, it's all different now.
johndbritton 16y ago
Try the main site: http://universalsubtitles.org/ http://universalsubtitles.org/
kleiba 16y ago
The people behind this service should beware of copyright violations - just because a video has been made accessible to the general public by their authors does not necessarily mean that others have the right to translate the contents of that video. I remember that a co-worker of mine started translating his favorite math book into his native language, at first just for his private use. But then he thought that others might benefit from his effort, too, so he contacted the publisher of the original book. He was only half-way through with the translations and had kept everything to himself, but the publisher was not amused at all and fired back at him in classic cease-and-desist manner. He stopped translating right away. Such an attitude sucks, but from a business perspective I can sort of understand that the copyright holders want to keep the option to offer a translated version themselves. And in that case, it's certainly their right to pick the (certified) translator of their choice. I don't know if the above scenario translates (no pun intended) very well to web videos, especially those that are made available without commercial interest by their authors. But the question of copyrights is ever so present these days.
- beoba 16y ago
  Your co-worker was creating a direct translated copy of the original material, whereas in this case it's a caption which is only really usable in conjunction with the original. I think the problem would be if you were actually distributing the original video along with the caption, but in this case only the user-created caption is changing hands. See eg Rifftrax
- drdaeman 16y ago
  It's somehow fun and weird at the same time, how RMS lectures cannot be legally translated in this way. This's because RMS asks to license videos under CC-ND, which, along with obvious misuse (out-of-context cuts, gluing unrelated fragments together to create fakes etc), forbids proper transcripts and translations.
pat2man 16y ago
Its funny that they are targeting end users vs content creators. As a content creator I assume you would enjoy having subtitles for your content.
w1ntermute 16y ago
An interesting related effort is collaborative subtitling, as done by ViKi: http://www.viki.com/ http://www.viki.com/ They've got a web interface through which hundreds of people can simultaneously work on the subtitles for one video. They were on TechCrunch a few weeks ago, I think.

25 points by aeurielesn 16y ago

beoba 16y ago

There are about/faq links, but they're all dead. Maybe wait until the site has been finished before posting it.

aeurielesn 16y ago
They don't seem to be dead for me.
- beoba 16y ago
  Looks like they hadn't finished posting the new layout at the time, it's all different now.

johndbritton 16y ago

Try the main site: http://universalsubtitles.org/ http://universalsubtitles.org/

kleiba 16y ago

The people behind this service should beware of copyright violations - just because a video has been made accessible to the general public by their authors does not necessarily mean that others have the right to translate the contents of that video. I remember that a co-worker of mine started translating his favorite math book into his native language, at first just for his private use. But then he thought that others might benefit from his effort, too, so he contacted the publisher of the original book. He was only half-way through with the translations and had kept everything to himself, but the publisher was not amused at all and fired back at him in classic cease-and-desist manner. He stopped translating right away. Such an attitude sucks, but from a business perspective I can sort of understand that the copyright holders want to keep the option to offer a translated version themselves. And in that case, it's certainly their right to pick the (certified) translator of their choice. I don't know if the above scenario translates (no pun intended) very well to web videos, especially those that are made available without commercial interest by their authors. But the question of copyrights is ever so present these days.

beoba 16y ago
Your co-worker was creating a direct translated copy of the original material, whereas in this case it's a caption which is only really usable in conjunction with the original. I think the problem would be if you were actually distributing the original video along with the caption, but in this case only the user-created caption is changing hands. See eg Rifftrax
drdaeman 16y ago
It's somehow fun and weird at the same time, how RMS lectures cannot be legally translated in this way. This's because RMS asks to license videos under CC-ND, which, along with obvious misuse (out-of-context cuts, gluing unrelated fragments together to create fakes etc), forbids proper transcripts and translations.

pat2man 16y ago

Its funny that they are targeting end users vs content creators. As a content creator I assume you would enjoy having subtitles for your content.

w1ntermute 16y ago

An interesting related effort is collaborative subtitling, as done by ViKi: http://www.viki.com/ http://www.viki.com/ They've got a web interface through which hundreds of people can simultaneously work on the subtitles for one video. They were on TechCrunch a few weeks ago, I think.