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.
视频分享网站YouTube在2005年诞生的时候，一个视频观看的新时代也随之降临了，此前存在于传统媒体市场的很多地理和商业壁垒轰然倒塌。不过，虽然这是一个带有开创性的平台，但语言问题仍然是一大障碍，使得非英语内容很难为受众所欣赏。
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.
YouTube除了有用户拿着仅仅价值100美元的数码相机制作的长达数千小时的业余视频（这些传播广泛的视频能让任何一个人成为明星），还让网民得以一窥那些不常见的电视市场制作的内容。此前由于播出范围有限，这些节目只能被一小部分观众看到。
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.
从乌兹别克语的MV到韩语电视剧，再到上世纪70年代播出后就再也没看到过的电视广告，网络存储容量的深度意味着，在网络视频市场上，没有那种内容真正因为内容太过边缘化或观众数量太少而难以找到立足之地。
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.
虽然网络有种种方法可以跨越国界提高生产力，但节目内容仍然因为语言的缘故而高度分散。从电影发展的现代历史看，不同语种市场之间的内容从来就不是多向流动的。虽然来自美国主要影视制作机构的英语节目内容通过添加字幕和配音的方式能够做到在全球播出，但那些添加英文字幕或英文配音的外国节目内容仍然被普遍视作利基市场──虽然美国等市场多语种程度越来越高。
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.
尽管YouTube满足了讲不同语言的多数市场的需求，由于用户对当地语言内容的需求，专门针对特定语言和特定国家的视频网站异军突起，比如中国的优酷(Youku)、俄罗斯的Rutube和以伊朗人为主要受众的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.
不过，使用人数较少、地理位置偏僻的语言之间直接翻译产生的互联网内容就少见得多了，比如，翻译成马来语的克罗地亚语视频。这不仅是因为此类市场之间缺乏发行的基础设施（翻译是一个关键因素），还因为大多数人想当然地认为，用户对此类内容的需求不大。
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.
总部位于新加坡的互联网初创企业Viki正在挑战人们的这一看法。该公司是入围《华尔街日报》2012年亚洲创新奖最终决赛单元的12家公司之一。该公司已经开发出了一项视频托管服务，由一个字幕组社区提供支持，他们负责把电视和电影的视频片段翻译成大约160种语言。
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.
Viki的创始人霍瓦吉米安(Razmig Hovaghimian)现年37岁，他将这个网站称作“其他人的Hulu，因为该网站专注于让非英语电视节目走出传统市常
'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.'
霍瓦吉米安说，用户和内容之间存在障碍，我想要打破这个障碍，如果不打破的话内容就无法传播。
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.
Viki网站上现在有1,000多个视频，包括电影、电视节目和MV，其中最受欢迎的视频来自韩国、日本和台湾等地区。
For example, 'Playful Kiss,' a Korean television series, has translated subtitles in 56 languages, including Tagalog, Estonian and Greek.
例如，韩国电视剧《恶作剧之吻》(Playful Kiss)已经被翻译成56种语言，包括塔加拉语、爱沙尼亚语和希腊语。
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.
尽管全球使用范围最广的语言英语毫无疑问是Viki上使用最多的字幕译出语──目前已有约2.5亿词的容量，但出人意料的是，罗马尼亚语和土耳其语也已经进入Viki上使用数量排名前10的译出语之列，这一平台的覆盖范围之广由此可见一斑。
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.
Viki最初的投资方是Neoteny Labs。Neoteny Labs是一家专门在新加坡投资的初创基金，由风险投资人伊藤穰一(Joichi Ito)和霍夫曼(Reid Hoffman)负责管理。伊藤穰一是推特(Twitter)的早期投资人，而霍夫曼是LinkedIn的联合创始人兼执行董事长。
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.
去年，Viki获得了第二轮融资，投资方除了第一轮的投资者还有一些新的投资者，包括英国广播公司(BBC)的商业分支机构BBC Worldwide和SK电讯(SK Telecom Co. Ltd.)的移动业务子公司SK Planet。 该网站8月份的独立访问者数量达到了1,400万，鉴于Viki刚刚在中国社交网站人人网发布了专属专区，预计这个数字还会增长。
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.
伊藤穰一认为，Viki既可以降低内容的营销和发行成本，又可以用比当前更具数据粒度的信息帮助内容所有者锁定未开发市常
'I think that high-quality content creates platforms for communities that become local advocates for new cultural interactions,' he says.
他说，我认为高质量内容为一些群体创造了平台，这些群体在其所在的地区正成为新的文化互动的倡导者。
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.
尽管日本和韩国艺术家在自身语言市场之外的支持者数量颇为不少，伊藤穰一认为，随着制作内容价值的提升，其他新兴的文化同样会吸引到新的受众。他说，比如我现在就对来自阿拉伯、拉丁美洲和印度大陆的内容尤其感兴趣。