In the boundless social universe, the presence of subtitles accompanying a video not only implies greater inclusiveness, as in the case of deaf or hearing impaired people, but also practicality. Being able to view the audio transcription of a clip is in most cases a godsend, especially when the smartphone audio is low and if the noises of the environment in which you are immersed prohibit good listening. Without neglecting the greater intimacy and even more direct involvement in the experience of use that arouses a visual support in superimposition.
TikTok is well aware of this and, one year after the introduction of automatically generated subtitles on the platform, in the past few hours announced new features regarding subtitling and translation of video clips. A similar update was also announced a few months ago by Instagram, its direct competitor in the mutual pursuit that has long led the two social networks to “imitate” each other and absorb similar, if not identical, functions.
Among the novelties, the platform owned by ByteDance has included the possibility, even for viewers (no longer just creators) to activate the automatic subtitles of a video at their discretion to facilitate viewing. The translation of the captions and descriptions of the posts (an option that has already been available for some time on other platforms), as well as of the text stickers, is also on the way.
These new tools will involve a first batch of languages, including Italian, English, German, Indonesian, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.
The news is still being implemented and is currently available for a limited number of videos. As explained in an official blog post by the company, the hope is that the new features will be extended to a growing number of content in the coming months.
