YouTube adds automatic captioning to videos

Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

Google owned YouTube which pioneered online streaming videos has started providing automatic captions to videos to make the site more accessible to the deaf and people with hearing difficulties.

At present the feature is only available for videos recorded in English and Google says that more languages will be added in the coming months.

Even though the idea and intentions are honorable, the limitation of the software is creating unintended and some times hilarious results, as for the captions to work properly the audio track need to be as uncluttered as possible and the speaker talking with a clear voice, lack of which generates garbled transcriptions which has been christened as “YouTube Caption Fail” by some people online, screen shots are been collected of some of the oddest captions spotted, and then are circulated through blogs and photo sharing sites for all to see.

Technology surely will improve in the future, but is proving to be a a great past time for people to hunt down the oddest translations.

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