TikTok users will no longer wait for their favorite content creator to turn on subtitles in their channel. The company has started implementing automatic speech-to-text conversion, only in a few languages so far.
The function of showing automatically generated subtitles in the app can be enabled in any video. This can help if the user has hearing problems or is in a noisy environment.
TikTok has become a platform that transcends cultural boundaries to make global connections feel even more effortless. Every day, audiences from around the world learn, entertain and express themselves on TikTok without limitations. We continue to invest in creating an inclusive and accessible environment; so that our growing global community can feel free and comfortable expressing themselves and finding connection with others.
The feature is very useful for those who know a foreign language well, but do not always perceive it correctly by ear – although the robot sometimes makes mistakes when generating subtitles, in general, the meaning of the speech is quite reliable. Moreover, the social network has provided automatic translation of subtitles and text stickers. If it is not clear what exactly is happening, video descriptions are available.
In 2021, we launched captions so that creators around the world could transcribe their own videos; to generate subtitles that make content more accessible to everyone. Today, we’re introducing new caption and translation tools in hopes of lowering the language barrier to help bring entertaining global content to more users. These updates will support an initial batch of languages including English, Portuguese, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish and Turkish.
Currently, we have support for only a few languages, including Chinese, English, German, Indonesian, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Turkish. Prospects for supporting other languages have not yet been specified.
It is worth noting that in a similar YouTube Shorts service, support for several other languages subtitles is already available, as well as the ability to auto-translate videos, at least from those languages into English and from English into many other languages.
