BBC to machine-translate TV news into Japanese and Russian

BBC to machine-translate TV news into Japanese and Russian

The BBC has announced that it's piloting "virtual voiceover" technology, which will be used to automatically translate TV reports into Japanese.
In early 2016, the broadcaster's Russian service will start using it as well.

Creating a way for news editors to produce multi-language reports almost single-handedly, the BBC's technology will take the script for a news package and translate it into the specified language. According to Broadcast, the tool uses Google Translate for actual translation.

Later on, a bilingual journalist will need to polish the text. The voiceover will then be recorded automatically using one of the synthesised voices.

News packages that utilise the new technology will be published online on BBC local websites under the new Today In Video service.

The BBC demonstrated the way the technology works in a video that uses one of the synthesised voices:

BBC's "virtual voiceover" demo

The initial pilot testing will run until April 2016 with the Japanese and Russian languages. Spanish is also a language of interest for the broadcaster, which could be added at a later stage.

Built by the BBC News Labs, the technology "means we can bring more of our international journalism to more people," said the BBC's digital development director James Montgomery.

Although it might seem that technology like this could take jobs from humans, an anonymous source at the BBC said that "the intention was instead to free up reporters to do more journalism rather than administrative tasks."

A BBC spokeperson said later on “We are currently using Google Translate but it could just as easily be another translation engine and we're likely to work with others as the project progress.”

Source: Ars technica