XL8 Inc., a Silicon Valley tech company providing AI-powered Machine Translation technology optimized for media content, is broadening its translation and subtitling support for the rapidly growing Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) over-the-top (OTT) market. The company has expanded its library of context aware language pairs and increased the capabilities of its MediaCAT platform, resulting in streamlined translation workflows, and more accurate and affordable localized content delivery.
With global content consumption surging, traditional human-based localization methods can become costly, especially as the demand for non-English language content and less commonly requested language pairs – for example, Turkish to Spanish – exhausts the already limited global pool of qualified linguists and corresponding LSP’s. XL8’s expanded AI-powered machine translation and synthesized dubbing resources provide a cost-effective complement for high-quality, affordable translation services.
“Organizations want to maximize their reach and return from global content, but doing so can incur additional localization costs as well as risk and uncertainty about which content will resonate with global viewers,” said Josh Pine, Chief Revenue Officer at XL8. “What good is it to own a catalog of content with global rights if it's too expensive to localize for many of the markets where it will be distributed? If our industry continues to localize the traditional way, it will just be impossible to keep up economically.”
FAST has several advantages over traditional linear TV broadcasting: easier and less costly channel creation and management; cost-effective content delivery using the open internet, and an attractive model for expanding advertiser demographics.
These new market opportunities require new tools and XL8 is enhancing its MediaCAT platform to enhance and widen localization workflow collaboration among content owners, distributors, linguists and LSPs.
This seamless AI-driven cloud-based solution easily scales up for the massive content volume handled by large traditional localization facilities, or down for freelance users working on only two or three titles monthly. Further, XL8 has integrated its subtitling editor into MediaCAT, allowing users to make translation edits and corrections in real time within the platform. MediaCAT’s “open” environment allows localization service providers working in a specific market, with more qualified linguists in certain languages, to easily step in and collaborate on a project, lowering localization costs and increasing accuracy.
As XL8 continually trains its AI engines to handle new language pairs, the company is seeing average improvements of 10% to 15% in localization translation quality, enabling them to reach up to 95% accuracy in many cases.
“Technology can help profitably monetize FAST market distribution by lowering the barriers to entry for non-English speaking content,” said Tim Jung, founder and CEO at XL8. “Together with the right combination of human capabilities, our AI-powered machine translation along with smart media, subtitling and dubbing tools helps increase consistency and reduce risks by providing high-quality, cost-effective translations that support multiple dialects, formalities, and colloquial phrases for diverse audiences worldwide.”
XL8 is also expanding its live subtitling engine into the online video conferencing world with a new app delivering accurate real-time translation and live subtitling during multi-language Zoom meetings. Stay tuned for more information.
