The scalability of language; the role of video

In today's post on the scalability of language, I want to talk about video. Video (as many of you know) is a passion of mine and I've found it a great way to communicate ideas to a broad audience.

The problem with video is that the language is harder to get at. With copy, you can, at a minimum, use a translation service to get a high-level overview of the content. With video that baseline doesn't exist.

Enter dotSub. This is a service that I learned about at the WeMedia Conference in Miami earlier this year. dotSub allows anyone to upload a video to the service and then add native language subtitles to the video. This starts with a solid English translation and then people can add new languages.

The community then validates the translation, adapts it and finally accepts it as an official version of the content. This is a great use of the crowdsourcing principle to add value to a diverse group of people. I do wish that dotSub accepted videos from other services, but they are still pretty new.

Here is a video overview:

[Feed readers please click through to the post if you cannot see the video.]

Services like dotSub allow native speakers to effectively translate content and share it with people in their community.

Tomorrow I will wrap up this series taking a look at the role design plays in language and communicating ideas across networks.

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Technorati Tags:
communications, conversations, language, marketing, Matt Dickman, social networks, strategy, Techno//Marketer, video, dotSub

Comments

[Social Network Web Design]

That could really be helpful in getting the point across. With subtitles your video can attract more viewers. Thanks for sharing this info!

[Michael Smolens]

Hi Matt - thanks for the kind words. I am not sure what you mean about you wish we would accept videos from other services as we have the ability to pull videos from any site and add the dotsub functionality to them.

Will be glad to explain this to you.

Thanks.

Michael Smolens
CEO dotSUB
michael@dotsub.com