Online Conference: Captioning, Translation, and Interpretation
May 8, 2021 2:49 PM Subscribe
What platforms besides Google and Zoom have automatic captioning, automatic translation of captions, and/or facilities for live interpretation?
My previous question wasn't specific enough, so...
Google Meet provides automatic captioning and translation of captions. It also has support for simultaneous audio interpretation (with live interpreters). Zoom has similar functionality (translation is via 3rd-party services).
What other platforms offer some or all of those features?
(Bonus question: What's their reputation re: user privacy?)
My previous question wasn't specific enough, so...
Google Meet provides automatic captioning and translation of captions. It also has support for simultaneous audio interpretation (with live interpreters). Zoom has similar functionality (translation is via 3rd-party services).
What other platforms offer some or all of those features?
(Bonus question: What's their reputation re: user privacy?)
Vimeo is often seen as an alternative to YouTube and relies on offering services for its revenue rather than the ad-heavy model used by YouTube. So from a privacy viewpoint Vimeo is probably superior to YouTube. Vimeo has a free tier but their Enterprise plan offers live automated English captioning.
I've only used Vimeo's free plan and I don't know how user friendly or reliable their streaming platform is. It may be hard to find a privacy friendly solution that provides non-English captioning. One option would be to combine different services or platforms. Vimeo allows the embed option as other services likely do as well. I'm not a programmer but I imagine the live stream event and live captioning service could be embedded on a single website. This would definitely require some web development knowledge and should be thoroughly tested before your event.
posted by mundo at 11:37 AM on May 9, 2021
I've only used Vimeo's free plan and I don't know how user friendly or reliable their streaming platform is. It may be hard to find a privacy friendly solution that provides non-English captioning. One option would be to combine different services or platforms. Vimeo allows the embed option as other services likely do as well. I'm not a programmer but I imagine the live stream event and live captioning service could be embedded on a single website. This would definitely require some web development knowledge and should be thoroughly tested before your event.
posted by mundo at 11:37 AM on May 9, 2021
A point of clarification... is your frame of reference a meeting or a webinar?
WebEx
GoToMeeting
Bluejeans (sort of)
Microsoft's Group Transcribe
Adobe Connect
posted by oceano at 11:12 PM on May 9, 2021
WebEx
GoToMeeting
Bluejeans (sort of)
Microsoft's Group Transcribe
Adobe Connect
posted by oceano at 11:12 PM on May 9, 2021
Response by poster: is your frame of reference a meeting or a webinar?
Yes? That is, we're looking for platforms (or, ideally, one single platform) that can handle both a single person presenting and a facilitated group discussion. The latter would probably require heavy use of a "spotlighting" feature so we don't have everyone talking at once.
So far it looks like Jitsi does have captioning capabilities for self-hosted instances, and on 8x8.vc. It may have translation, but that's more of a rumor at this point.
Also, Google Meet's caption translation may only work in Chrome.
posted by sibilatorix at 12:13 AM on May 10, 2021
Yes? That is, we're looking for platforms (or, ideally, one single platform) that can handle both a single person presenting and a facilitated group discussion. The latter would probably require heavy use of a "spotlighting" feature so we don't have everyone talking at once.
So far it looks like Jitsi does have captioning capabilities for self-hosted instances, and on 8x8.vc. It may have translation, but that's more of a rumor at this point.
Also, Google Meet's caption translation may only work in Chrome.
posted by sibilatorix at 12:13 AM on May 10, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
Microsoft Teams provides automatic captioning, but it does not currently provide automatic caption translation (it's US English only), nor simultaneous audio translation.
Teams' automatic captioning also leaves a bit to be desired. It's got better with female voices but it's still pretty poor with regional accents or anyone who talks quicker than an elderly cowboy. So despite me finding Teams brilliant in many ways and being happy to recommend it for other things (including privacy), you should definitely cross it off the list of options for this.
posted by underclocked at 1:55 AM on May 9, 2021 [1 favorite]