Is there a tool to translate foreign language podcasts? ->history buffs

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hi there,

just wondering if there is a tool that translates (directly or indirectly via transcription) foreign language podcasts?

Reason I am asking, I know there are a lot of history buffs in the SDMB, and I found one of the greatest “podcast golden nuggets” on the interwebs … but it is in german language …

so any help to make that information available to non-german speakers would be helpful to a lot of people…

2

If you just want a translated transcript, you can upload it to YouTube (privately/as an unlisted video) and enable auto generated captions and translations. Give it an hour or so and you should be able to see the translated captions.

If you want to actually re-dub the podcast audio in English, there are AI tools like https://elevenlabs.io/dubbing-studio or these other options: Reddit - The heart of the internet

This is an active area of AI research, and companies like Meta also have their own open source research models for this: SeamlessM4T-v2

But that’s not as easy to use as something already productized like ElevenLabs

3

But, also, keep in mind that it’s one thing to translate and dub a podcast for your own use… it’s another thing to then distribute that dub. The creator might not like it if you then published the dubbed version for public consumption. You may also run afoul of German and/or other countries’ copyright laws.

If you find a good solution, the right thing to do would prob be to reach out to the podcast maker and ask them if they’re OK with you sharing the translations, or if they have their own dubs planned.

4

in any case this would just be a “for one person” thing … no intention to publish other peoples thoughts/IP or so…

I was thinking along the line of: phone apps that can IRT translate conversations, where basically the podcast would be a (=the only) party to the conversation …

5

Recent iPhones and some Androids can do that, I think, but you’d have to play the podcast on another device. And they’re really meant for a sentence or two at a time, not a long monologue. A proper non real time dub would be better suited for that.

6

Zoom has an add-on translation feature to paid accounts that will transcribe and let you save it. We’ve found it to be quite accurate. I forgot the cost, but it was minimal. You can just open a zoom session with yourself and play the podcast.