Text Captions to Be Added to YouTube Videos

Google unveiled new technology to automatically add text captions to YouTube videos, The New York Times reported.

The technology can only add English-language captions thus far, but Google told the Times its automatic translation system will enable users to read the captions in 51 languages.

The captioning technology will roll out later this week, initially to only a few channels that specialize in educational content, but expanding gradually, Google told the Times.

Ken Harrenstien, a deaf engineer who helped to develop the automatic captioning system, told the Times:

This is something that I have dreamt of for many years. To see it happen is amazing.

Because the tools are not perfect, we want to make sure that we get feedback from the video owners and the viewers before we roll it out for the whole world. Sometimes the auto-captions are good. Sometimes they are not great, but they are better than nothing if you are hearing-impaired or don’t know the language.

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