Alloglot Audio Tracks
A tool for language learning
Earlier this week, I learned that some of my favorite YouTube channels allow viewers to enjoy their more recent episodes in a variety of languages. MaiorianusYT, who helps me meet the manly mandate to think about the Roman Empire at least once each day, offers automatically-generated alternatives to his original voice tracks in French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, and Japanese.
As might be expected, the dubbing of those parts of a video that show a person speaking creates a mismatch between the movements we see and the words we hear. Moreover, when the moving picture in question displays two or more parties to a conversation, the viewer who avails himself of an alloglot audio track enters a very strange place indeed, an uncanny valley in which a single voice speaks the parts of more than one person.
When, however, the virtual voice speaks over a sound-free image the combination of words and pictures works well. Indeed, because the robot reads his script with impersonal precision, such narration liberates language learners from the inevitable errors and idiosyncrasies of carbon-based speech. (Strange to say, while attempts by automatons to speak my mother tongue invariably irritate my ears, the robotic replication of the sounds of other idioms does not bother me a bit.)
Better yet, by giving language learners practice in listening to the formal register of the vernacular in question, the use of alloglot audio-tracks complements exercises, such as the watching of situation comediesYT or the reading of comic books, that allow them to engage informal speech.
Best of all, the close correspondence between the original audio track and its alloglot clone allows a viewer to use the first to prepare himself to exploit the second. That is, watching the video in English orients the viewers mind to its characters, setting, events, flow, tone, style, and ideas. Thus, when he engages the video in a different language, he can focus on things like vocabulary, idioms, pronunciation, and grammar.
Readers fond of podcasts and audiobooks may want to try the ‘audio-only’ variant of this technique. This can involve something as simple as covering the screen of the computer or as complex as separating the audio track from the video. (I do the latter by using one application to download the video as an MP4 file and another program to convert the MP4 into an MP3.)
Note on Software
As someone who uses old operating systems and older computers, I hesitate to recommend particular programs to readers less Luddite than I.
Note on Superscripts
YT indicates that the link that precedes it will take you to YouTube.
SST marks a link to an article on Substack
Great painting.