YouTube’s automatic subtitles in the ESL/ESP classroom

YouTube’s technology allows users to automatically obtain intralingual subtitles for the videos that are uploaded on the platform. As YouTube is owned by Google, it uses the Google Automatic Speech Recognition system (Google Voice) to synchronize the subtitles with the speakers’ utterances. In order to go one step further and produce automatic interlingual subtitles within a wide range of foreign languages, Google combines its ASR system with its Machine Translation system (Google Translate). However, despite ongoing improvements in technology, automatic captioning can fail to convey the message accurately. This can cause a series of cascading errors, leading the Machine Translation system to mistranslate or to hinder overall accuracy. This paper presents the results of a study conducted with a group of students at the University of Turin on the topic of marketing, to focus on the potential of using YouTube’s automatic subtitles to enhance their listening skills and use of specialized vocabulary.