Google is to add automatic captions to the tens of millions of English-language videos it hosts on YouTube, the web search giant said Friday.

The move will make the videos more accessible to deaf viewers but will also help Google index the content and supply relevant ads alongside it, analysts said.

Google has been experimenting with the automated captions for several months with a handful of high profile partners like the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and National Geographic. All other captions on YouTube videos were provided by the videos’ producers.

Google has been working on speech recognition technology for some five years, and uses the technology to transcribe audio voice mails through its Google Voice service, and to provide spoken Web searches from smart phones.

However, engineers warned that the technology is far from perfect and that the machine translations are sure to contain mistakes.

“We know it’s not perfect, and sometimes it will be funny,” said Google engineer Ken Harrenstien, who is deaf. “But it’s better than nothing.”

Share on Facebook

Google rolled out its new dictionary service: Google Dictionary. It is a fairly comprehensive resource, providing definitions, synonyms, related phrases and definitions from various academically authoritative online resources apart from Google’s own database of definitions.

Google Dictionary offers its services in 28 languages including English. It also provides translation services where possible, between English and other languages. Although, it is not to be mistaken with Google Translation.

Google Dictionary works like most other online dictionary services.  You type in a word you want it to define and it will publish the definition from its own database as well as list other references from other online sources.

Google always had the dictionary ability in the form of ‘define’ query in Google search. You can use Google Dictionary at either http://google.com/dictionary or http://dictionary.google.com

Share on Facebook