BBC Launches Machine-Translated Synthetic Voiceovers (bbc.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC News service is trialling a tool which provides synthesized journalist voice-overs in different languages, with translation provided by unspecified established online translation services. Although the simulated speech in the BBC video betrays itself with the characteristic staccato flow most associated with Stephen Hawking, the result is above average in terms of natural-sounding speech. However, journalists still need to clean up the returned translations, particularly as the initial test involves Russian and Japanese, and oriental auto-translations can prove embarrassing.

Comments

What's wrong with subtitles?

[jez9999]

I hate that the BBC are so obsessed with voiceovers. Just use subtitles for God's sake, and that way we can actually hear the original language. Some of us prefer that to a voiceover.

Yeah yeah it's prejudiced against blind people... and voiceovers are prejudiced against deaf people.