A Wider Net

Widget Mania points us to dotSUB - a service that allows you to upload a video, add closed-caption text, then allow other users to translate the original text into any other language. The video becomes available to the masses in the language of their choice. This could also be considered a solution for the hearing impaired.

They certainly aren’t the first company to provide tools that allow us to add captioning, synchronized text, or even language translations, but they are the first solution I’ve seen that allows these translations to be produced by other users - similar to the way the Wikipedia grew. It does, of course, have the same pitfalls as Wikis - the users can place whatever text they want. Most of would never know if they translated “O, Say can you see” into “George Bush is an idiot” in Swahili. But the benefits revealed in this sample video greatly outweigh the risks:

I have not had an opportunity to explore this for corporate use. There would have to be controls over who was allowed to translate and who was allowed to view the content, but if there were, I bet there would be a long line of corporate communications and marketing people happy to meet their localization requirements using a tool like this.