TED Open-Translation Project powered by dotSUB
May 14, 2009 by Bill Sobel
Filed under Industry News
A very special “Mazel Tov” to our friend Michael Smolens of dotSUB. Michael has been attending our events for years and has been sharing with me the success of dotSUB for as long as I can remember. dotSUB, in case you wondering, is a browser based tool enabling subtitling of videos on the web into and from any language.
A first-of-its-kind toolset is empowering volunteer translators worldwide to bring TED talks to their communities.
NEW YORK, May 13 /PRNewswire/ — The acclaimed 18-minute talks available free on the TED website will now be accessible beyond the English-speaking world, through the TED Open Translation Project (www.ted.com/translation), which launches today.
A year in the making, the project offers video subtitles, time-coded transcripts and the ability for volunteers worldwide to translate any talk into any language. The project launches with 300 translations in 40 languages; more than 200 volunteer translators have already contributed.
“TED’s mission is to spread good thinking globally, and so it’s high time we began reaching out to the 4.5 billion people on the planet who don’t speak English,” says TED Curator Chris Anderson. “We’re excited to be using a bottom-up, open-source approach that will in time allow all our talks to be translated into hundreds of languages. A web-empowered revolution in global education is under way. We’re not far from the day when most people on Earth will be able to directly access the world’s great teachers speaking to them in their own language. How cool is that?”
Subscribe
