Interactive

AI-powered machine translation technology firm XL8 has given attendees of the annual IBC event a preview of what to expect: the unveiling of MediaCAT, a new platform meant for seamless, AI-based media localisation, including automation, asset management and synchronisation capabilities for media content workflows.

MediaCAT automatically extracts lines from media content, matching the timecode, and translating content to a desired language pair, or multiple language pairs simultaneously. The platform enables in-line post-editing and the addition of synthetic dubbing or voice-overs, allowing users to audition specific voices quickly with just a few clicks.

“Content owners and service providers are under increasing pressure to meet the exploding worldwide demand for media titles and deliver hyper-localised translated media to a growing number of platforms,” said Janice Pearson, SVP of sales and strategy for XL8. “They need tools that not only automate and streamline the process but also scale to work at the speed of their business.”

Adding these new capabilities to XL8’s existing suite of Machine Translation Post-Edit (MTPE) services makes MediaCAT the most convenient and unified translation solution available for human translators. MediaCAT will allow users to edit timecode and set limits per segment for a translated subtitle in-line within the tool. These features significantly reduce tedious and repetitive tasks often associated with traditional translation workflows since XL8’s translation engine is specifically optimised for media content translation.

At IBC, XL8 is also previewing its EventCAT platform, which will complement XL8’s existing live subtitling capabilities for live broadcasts and events and provide an on/offline interpretation platform supported by a global network of thousands of interpreters.

The combination of MediaCAT and EventCAT allows linguists to streamline their workflows while unlocking the full power of Artificial Intelligence to support efficient and cost-effective media and conversational localisation. All products and services are designed to help localisation professionals with the power of XL8’s human-like machine translation engine.

XL8’s full array of media content services includes text and subtitle translations; auto subtitling based on speech recognition through ASR, auto-captioning, synchronisation; and synthesised dubbing and voice-overs. The company’s translation technology is distinguished from other competitive offerings through its use of Context Awareness models to translate colloquial phrases better. Context awareness allows the technology to truly “localise” content instead of simply translating it “word for word.” XL8’s translation engines can also incorporate specific language formalities by recognising the relationships between words and characters.