YouTube‘s search works well enough in English, but what if you want to search for English-language videos in your native tongue?
Currently, if you search for terms in your local language, you’ll get results of videos made in that language. But that might soon change. According to a report from Android Police, the video streaming giant is experimenting with a feature that you search across videos in all languages, using queries in your native language.
The feature automatically translates the video title and description on the search page — both on the web interface and the mobile app. This means that you could get video suggestions from all around the world and read what they’re about in your local language. This is great for someone who’s comfortable with listening to videos in a different language but prefers the text on the site in their own tongue.
What’s more, the company is also testing an auto-captioning feature with support for more languages. This makes watching videos in different languages a lot easier.
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Android Police’s report notes that currently, the feature is available just in Portuguese. Hopefully, YouTube will launch it officially with support for additional languages. A report from Pew Research published in 2019 noted that 67% of content on channels with more than 250,000 subscribers is not in English. So there’s a huge market of videos that are in local languages; auto-translation features could get these creators more viewers.
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