One of my hobbies has been hunting for obscure foreign films. 20 years ago I scoured eBay to get VHS copies of Orson Welles’ “F for Fake” and Les Blank’s “Burden of Dreams.”
A few years ago, I finally tracked down a copy of the 1965 Norwegian film The Guards (Vaktpostene). For some strange reason, the film was entirely in Norwegian. That blocked me from going any further with it.
Last week, an AI app called WhisperTranscribe solved this problem. I ran the film through the model, which automatically detected the Norwegian audio and generated English subtitles. The process was seamless. 100% local, no cloud nonsense. Free too.
AI has changed the way we interact with niche media. Tools like WhisperTranscribe allow us to engage with any piece of history, regardless of the original language. There’s a French book that’s been out for 12 years without an English translation that I really want to read. Translating that is my next project.
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