Multilingual subtitles for livestream translations

Livestream translation for more than two subtitle languages

Jan 9, 2022 | Blog, Hopin, Stories, YouTube

Do you want your livestream translated into more than two subtitle languages?

Spf.io has worked with organizations to localize and scale content for global audiences. We’ve worked with businesses, community organizations, churches, and more to problem-solve the best translation strategy for their vision and goals.

We provide multilingual captions and subtitles for both recorded and live content. Our all-in-one interface gives you content management tools that can help organize multimedia for multiple platforms (Zoom, YouTube, Hopin, and more). If you choose to do your translation and editing in-house, our software helps track and streamline your editing process.

Spf.io partners with companies that often have complex setups. This article outlines some of our lessons learned.

Finding translation solutions for multilingual subtitles

T4 Education – multilingual subtitles in 11 languages for 143 countries

Scaling up for a large conference serving over 45,000 is no easy feat. With simultaneous broadcasts using StreamYard, YouTube, and Facebook Live, T4 Education needed a consistent livestream translation solution across all their platforms. Using spf.io’s Audience View (a browser-based viewer for captions, translations, and audio live-streaming), they provided live translations for close to 14,000 simultaneous connections during the event. T4 used a manuscript approach and in-house volunteers to generate and proofread translations for pre-recorded material that was then broadcasted during the live event.

We learned that many platforms have limitations when it comes to translation into multiple languages using spf.io’s audience view allowed T4 to scale up despite these limitations, exceeding expectations in offering multilingual accessibility to their audience.

ILA conference livestream - English, Spanish, Portuguese

Interaction Latin America (ILA) 2021 – livestream translation for three source languages

ILA set up simultaneous interpreters on separate Hopin stages (English, Spanish, and Portuguese) for their event. Their conference had a mix of pre-recorded broadcasts, live Q&As, and panel discussions in all three of these languages. Unfortunately, the captioning service they chose backed out at the last minute since they could not handle switching between presentations with more than one source language. ILA needed a livestream translation solution that worked for multiple languages other than English  a unique service that could adapt to their setup.

Since spf.io was designed to handle multilingual events from the start, we quickly developed translation solutions for ILA just days before the event. We used spf.io’s AVCS (Audio/Video Caption and Subtitling) for the pre-recorded talks to quickly generate transcripts, captions, and subtitle translations with high accuracy.
By using translations of the original transcript to create subtitles, ILA was able to offer consistent captioning even when they experienced technical difficulties with their audio broadcast. For organizers planning multilingual conferences, it may not be advisable to use speech-to-text technologies that ingest audio from simultaneous interpreters. A manuscript-based approach provided a more reliable and consistent solution, given the audio quality issues and lagging that ILA experienced while using Hopin.

Spanish to English to Portuguese Translation - Language Switcher

Want to switch your source language? Spf.io’s Language Switcher makes it easy. 

For the live sessions that used more than one source language, we used spf.io’s Language Switcher to toggle easily between English, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers. ILA chose to use a spf.io remote operator to run the spf.io software, but given more time, they may have elected to train their own staff to supervise and release subtitles during the event. For multilingual livestreams, spf.io’s Language Switcher is ideal since it gives organizers the ability to provide captions for multiple source languages.

Multilingual church translation in many languages - worship congregation

One Voice Fellowship (OVF) church – multilingual livestreams and YouTube subtitles

One Voice Fellowship Pastor Chris Sicks wanted to offer multilingual services that reflected the diversity of their congregation. Hiring interpreters had not worked well for their church – it took too long to prepare for each sermon, and getting accurate live interpretation was a challenge.

The translation strategy we employed with OVF gave them a high accuracy, low-cost option with quick turnaround times. After uploading and automatically translating a manuscript with spf.io, OVF human post-editors checked translations for accuracy and idioms. Then, during the sermon, Pastor Chris Sicks would use spf.io Virtual Teleprompter to release the manuscript, line by line, as he read it. Spf.io saves the history of all captions and subtitles released during a session, and OVF used this to publish multilingual content to YouTube using our time-saving fastSRT feature.

At spf.io, we realized that clients often want to record livestreams and release them shortly thereafter with multilingual subtitles. With fastSRT, you don’t have to caption and translate your content twice – since spf.io saves the timing and content of your captions, you can re-use them for your event recordings! This is especially useful if you want to provide on-demand access to recordings for participants in other time zones.

 

Do you have a unique or ambitious event that requires live translation for more than two languages? Tell us about your setup, and we’ll develop a translation solution that works for you!

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