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Why do people give videos English titles when the videos themselves are in some other language?

I really really don't understand how people are either so tiny brained or so fkin inconsiderate. Probably this is the wrong community to post this, as my infuriation levels are far from mild.

Like... you look up a tutorial on a specific thing. You see a list of videos describing the very thing that you want in perfect English. You open the video to see that it is in a completely different language (usually Hindi). You then feel like personally going on a mission to assassinate that video creator. /s

Like come on... I understand that English alphabets are more readable to people who speak languages other than English. FINE. I GET IT. But would it be too much to ask to at least put the name of the fkin language that your video is actually in, in the title?

Like... it would so much better for a video title to be "(Hindi) Ranked Retrieval model explained" instead of "Ranked Retrieval model explained" and it turning out to be in Hindi. Like... do these people not think? Or do they not have a brain? Or do they just not care?

I scoured through SO MANY VIDEOS and all of them have this nonsense going on. Like come on....

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Many people can read English. Not as many can read Hindi (world wide)

BruceTwarzen ,

Calm down little man.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

I AM CALM

said the little man calmly

Hegar ,
@Hegar@kbin.social avatar

The incredibly inconsiderate inconvenience of having to click the next video?

I've run into this issue a lot while looking into Indian history and archaeology and it has never bothered me in the slightest.

Why do some people seem so offended by briefly hearing a language they don't understand? You clicked a video that turned out to not be what you wanted. That's gonna happen.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

Why do some people seem so offended by briefly hearing a language they don't understand?

I'm Indian myself. I hear this language quite frequently. So no, I don't have any problem with it specifically. I however absolutely have a problem with clickbait.

What is clickbait? Misrepresenting the content of the video in its title and thumbnail is clickbait. Writing the title in English without giving a single indication that the content of the video is not in English is blatant clickbait.

Just think how ridiculous the situation is. Imagine I write a title in fluent Hindi while speaking English in the video.

Imagine if I sold books in France where the title is in fluent French, but had the content of the book written completely in Polish... Like... Why??!!! How's that normal?

Hegar ,
@Hegar@kbin.social avatar

How’s that normal?

Because English is an important international language. It's the most spoken second language - the language most spoken by bilingual people.

In some places it's tied in with status - a lot of universities regularly use English titles on non English language content, for example.

It helps a bilingual audience find videos in both English and their native language with the same search.

And I bet it helps with SEO which probably means that an English title can increase your income.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

Okay, what I meant was "how is this acceptable". More like "how is this normally accepted?" or "how is everyone just okay with this".

But your answer does provide very valid points for the causal points behind this.

And I bet it helps with SEO which probably means that an English title can increase your income.

Makes sense. Which makes it so scummy! Inconvenience thousands just to gain a few more views...

Moghul ,

It's youtube. If you copy the link and paste it into a chat or something where it'll be embedded, you can see the original title.

teft ,
@teft@lemmy.world avatar

A lot of indians are multilingual so a hindi video with english isn’t really that weird.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

I'm Indian and bilingual. I just don't understand Hindi. Also, YouTube isn't for Indians only, is it? It's so scummy to falsely represent the content of your video like this. Imagine going to France, selling a book whose cover is in French, but the book's actually in Russian.

AmidFuror ,

The complaint is about videos where only the title is English.

hinterlufer ,

Are you speaking of YouTube? YouTube has a "feature" that will auto-translate titles of videos to your account language (the creator may have to enable this, not sure).

If you google for the issue you'll find multiple people with the same issue, but afaik there's not really a proper way to prevent the translation. If you do understand the original language, you can add it to your account languages to stop translation though.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

Then looks like these peeps don't enable it. I get this option rarely.

Malix ,
@Malix@sopuli.xyz avatar

(the creator may have to enable this, not sure).

afaik not an option for creators, OR it isn't an option for me/my videos.

UraniumBlazer OP ,

Interesting. I really wonder why YouTube hasn't made this universal. Like... It works quite well for the videos that I get the option for. Maybe it doesn't work for videos where it isn't confident about the auto-transcription?

Malix ,
@Malix@sopuli.xyz avatar

That's probably the thing. My videos are in finnish, with quite a bit of background speech in english (long story short: they're letsplays). Could be that the auto-transcription can't quite parse the random mix of finnish and english.
I've mostly seen some odd videotitles translated to finnish, and tbh, they are so wildly confusing to me. I almost skipped a video from one of my fav. creators due to the title as I wasn't expecting it.

XEAL , (edited )

YouTube right? It's actually some personalized translation or something. The title may displayed in different languages depending on the audience.

It's happened to me before. I see a title in one language and from private browsing (logged out) it's in a different one.

Aaaand Google confirms the issue: https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube%20automatic%20title%20translation

Edit: typo

UraniumBlazer OP ,

I doubt I'm facing this issue. To bypass Indian vids, I change my location to the Netherlands (Proton VPN) on private browsing. Despite this, I still get this nonsense.

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