South Korea, Japan and
Taiwan=等地區?
Breaking Down Communication Barriers
When YouTube kicked off
as a video-sharing site in 2005, it spawned a new era of video watching
that tore down many of the geographic and commercial barriers that had
existed in traditional media markets. But despite the platform's
ground-breaking nature, language still remains the biggest obstacle
preventing non-English-language content from reaching untapped
audiences.Along with the thousands of hours of viral amateur footage that made celebrities out of anyone with a $100 digital camera, the platform also gave Web users a glimpse into the world of content from obscure television markets that had previously remained siloed by their small broadcast reach.
From Uzbek music videos to Korean drama serials to television commercials not seen since they last aired in the 1970s, the depth of the Internet's storage capacity means there is no content too fringe and no fanbase too small to find a place in the online video marketplace.
For all the ways the Internet has been able to increase productivity across national borders, however, content is still highly fragmented along linguistic lines. Throughout moving picture's modern history, content traffic between different language markets has been anything but multidirectional: While English-language content predominantly from the major U.S. production houses has a truly global reach through both subtitled and dubbed forms, so-called 'foreign' content subtitled or dubbed in English is still widely seen as niche-market stuff, despite the increasingly multilingual nature of a market such as the U.S.
And while YouTube caters to a large range of language markets, the appetite for local-language content has given rise to language- and country-specific video-hosting sites such as Youku in China, Rutube in Russia and the Iranian-focused Vidoosh.
Much less common, however, are direct translations between smaller and geographically distant language markets─Croatian to Malay, for example. Underlying this is not just a lack of distribution infrastructure linking such markets (translation being a key piece) but also a dominant assumption that there is unlikely to be an appetite for such exchanges.
Viki, a Singapore-based Internet start-up and one of 12 finalists in The Wall Street Journal's Asian Innovation Awards, is challenging that assumption. It has developed a video-hosting service that is supported by a community of subtitlers that translate television and movie clips into some 160 languages.
Razmig Hovaghimian, the 37-year-old founder of Viki, describes the site as 'Hulu for the rest of us,' given its focus on bringing non-English-language television productions out of their traditional markets.
'Right now, there's a wedge between fans and the content,' Mr. Hovaghimian says. 'I want to remove that wedge because the content is trapped there.'
The site has more than 1,000 titles─movies, television programs and music videos─and the most popular content originates from markets like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.
For example, 'Playful Kiss,' a Korean television series, has translated subtitles in 56 languages, including Tagalog, Estonian and Greek.
And while the most widely spoken languages unsurprisingly account for most of Viki's translated subtitle words─about 250 million words at present─Romanian and Turkish have made an unexpected entrance into the top 10 'translated-into' languages, showing the surprising reach of the platform.
Viki originally was funded by Neoteny Labs, a Singapore-focused start-up fund headed by venture capitalists Joichi Ito, an early investor in Twitter, and Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn.
The website last year received a second round of funding from its original investor base and new investors BBC Worldwide─the British broadcaster's commercial arm─and SK Telecom Co.'s mobile spinoff SK Planet. It drew about 14 million unique views in August but having just launched a 'behind-the-firewall' service on Chinese social networking site RenRen, this number is expected to increase.
Mr. Ito believes Viki can both lower the costs of marketing and distribution of content and help content owners target frontier markets with much more granular information about audiences than is currently available.
'I think that high-quality content creates platforms for communities that become local advocates for new cultural interactions,' he says.
While Japanese and more recently Korean artists have established impressive followings outside their own language markets, Mr. Ito sees potential for other emerging cultures to also build bridges to new audiences as production values improve. 'In particular, I'm interested in Arab, Latin American and Indian content right now,' he says.
SAM HOLMES
Viki：沖破語言藩籬 享受無邊視界
Viki
配法文字幕的日本動畫系列《怪醫黑傑克》
視
頻分享網站YouTube在2005年誕生的時候﹐一個視頻觀看的新時代也隨之降臨了﹐此前存在於傳統媒體市場的很多地理和商業壁壘轟然倒塌。不過﹐雖然這是一個帶有開創性的平台﹐但語言問題仍然是一大障礙﹐使得非英語內容很難為受眾所欣賞。YouTube除了有用戶拿著僅僅價值100美元的數碼相機製作的長達數千小時的業餘視頻（這些傳播廣泛的視頻能讓任何一個人成為明星）﹐還讓網民得以一窺那些不常見的電視市場製作的內容。此前由於播出範圍有限﹐這些節目只能被一小部分觀眾看到。
從烏茲別克語的MV到韓語電視劇﹐再到上世紀70年代播出後就再也沒看到過的電視廣告﹐網絡存儲容量的深度意味著﹐在網絡視頻市場上﹐沒有那種內容真正因為內容太過邊緣化或觀眾數量太少而難以找到立足之地。
雖 然網絡有種種方法可以跨越國界提高生產力﹐但節目內容仍然因為語言的緣故而高度分散。從電影發展的現代歷史看﹐不同語種市場之間的內容從來就不是多向流動 的。雖然來自美國主要影視製作機構的英語節目內容通過添加字幕和配音的方式能夠做到在全球播出﹐但那些添加英文字幕或英文配音的外國節目內容仍然被普遍視 作利基市場──雖然美國等市場多語種程度越來越高。
儘管YouTube滿足了講不同語言的多數市場的需求﹐由於用戶對當地語言內容的需求﹐專門針對特定語言和特定國家的視頻網站異軍突起﹐比如中國的優酷(Youku)、俄羅斯的Rutube和以伊朗人為主要受眾的Vidoosh。
不過﹐使用人數較少、地理位置偏僻的語言之間直接翻譯產生的互聯網內容就少見得多了﹐比如﹐翻譯成馬來語的克羅地亞語視頻。這不僅是因為此類市場之間缺乏發行的基礎設施（翻譯是一個關鍵因素）﹐還因為大多數人想當然地認為﹐用戶對此類內容的需求不大。
總部位於新加坡的互聯網初創企業Viki正在挑戰人們的這一看法。該公司是入圍《華爾街日報》2012年亞洲創新獎最終決賽單元的12家公司之一。該公司已經開發出了一項視頻托管服務﹐由一個字幕組社區提供支持﹐他們負責把電視和電影的視頻片段翻譯成大約160種語言。
Viki的創始人霍瓦吉米安(Razmig Hovaghimian)現年37歲﹐他將這個網站稱作“其他人的Hulu”﹐因為該網站專注於讓非英語電視節目走出傳統市場。
霍瓦吉米安說﹐用戶和內容之間存在障礙﹐我想要打破這個障礙﹐如果不打破的話內容就無法傳播。
Viki網站上現在有1,000多個視頻﹐包括電影、電視節目和MV﹐其中最受歡迎的視頻來自韓國、日本和台灣等地區。
Viki
Viki上配愛沙尼亞語字幕的韓劇《惡作劇之吻》
儘管全球使用範圍最廣的語言英語毫無疑問是Viki上使用最多的字幕譯出語──目前已有約2.5億詞的容量﹐但出人意料的是﹐羅馬尼亞語和土耳其語也已經進入Viki上使用數量排名前10的譯出語之列﹐這一平台的覆蓋範圍之廣由此可見一斑。
Viki 最初的投資方是Neoteny Labs。Neoteny Labs是一家專門在新加坡投資的初創基金﹐由風險投資人伊籐穰一(Joichi Ito)和霍夫曼(Reid Hoffman)負責管理。伊籐穰一是推特(Twitter)的早期投資人﹐而霍夫曼是LinkedIn的聯合創始人兼執行董事長。
去年 ﹐Viki獲得了第二輪融資﹐投資方除了第一輪的投資者還有一些新的投資者﹐包括英國廣播公司(BBC)的商業分支機構BBC Worldwide和SK電訊(SK Telecom Co. Ltd.)的移動業務子公司SK Planet。 該網站8月份的獨立訪問者數量達到了1,400萬﹐鑒於Viki剛剛在中國社交網站人人網發佈了專屬專區﹐預計這個數字還會增長。
伊籐穰一認為﹐Viki既可以降低內容的營銷和發行成本﹐又可以用比當前更具數據粒度的信息幫助內容所有者鎖定未開發市場。
他說﹐我認為高質量內容為一些群體創造了平台﹐這些群體在其所在的地區正成為新的文化互動的倡導者。
儘管日本和韓國藝術家在自身語言市場之外的支持者數量頗為不少﹐伊籐穰一認為﹐隨著製作內容價值的提升﹐其他新興的文化同樣會吸引到新的受眾。他說﹐比如我現在就對來自阿拉伯、拉丁美洲和印度大陸的內容尤其感興趣。
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