Publika Team

Behind the scenes: translation moves inside cinemaOS

One change for the next build. It has been in our main code since 26 September.

In Build 7, subtitle and dub-script translation uses Apple's on-device translation by default, and some languages need support installed in macOS first. In the next build, translation runs on the language model that ships inside cinemaOS, for every language that model handles well enough. Nothing downloads, nothing leaves your Mac, and there's no account or service behind it.

"Well enough" is measured. We ran every candidate language through the model and scored whether the meaning survives a round trip. A good score means the meaning came back. It doesn't prove the grammar.

• 102 languages were measured, and 65 reached our score floor.
• 7 of those are held back because the saved output drifted into a different language. Asturian came out as Spanish, for example.
• That leaves 58 languages on offer. Four reached Good: Dutch, French, German and European Portuguese. The other 54 are Draft or Rough.

Each language shows its tier where you pick it. Good means spot-check it. Draft and Rough mean a fluent person reads it before anyone else sees it. Every translated line stays marked as machine translation until someone approves it.

Which languages do you subtitle into, and who checks them today? Your answers tell us where to measure next.