News TED Translators

Talk pages can now recognize your language of choice

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Talk-page-in-Spanish

Thanks to the intrepid volunteers who translate TED Talks into 96 languages — and thanks to the incredible reach of the TEDx community — TED has truly become an international organization. Which means that many of you watching talks are more comfortable reading subtitles in your native language than listening to them in English. We want to give you the best experience. So we are bringing you talk pages in your language, by taking your browser’s language preference into account.

Here’s how it works: If you’ve set your browser preferences to prefer a language over English, and a talk is translated in that language, when you arrive on the talk page, the text you see will be in your language of choice. When the video begins playing, it will be automatically subtitled in your preferred language. You will also see information on the TED volunteer translators who spent their time bringing you the talk in your language. And you’ll get a link to other talks translated in your language. It’s magic.

Here’s how to make this happen:

  • If you use Chrome, go to “Preferences” and, under “Advanced Settings,” choose your language. Drag it above English. Restart the browser and check out a favorite talk.
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    Chrome-options.
  • If you use Firefox, go to “Preferences” and, under “Content,” select to choose languages. Select a language to add and move it to the top of your preferences. Restart the browser and check out a favorite talk.
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    Firefox-options.
  • To do this if you use Safari, you will need to change the language preferences on your computer itself. Restart the browser and check out a favorite talk.

A hint: Classic talks are more likely to have your language as an option, as translators have had a longer period of time to work on the talk. What happens if there is no transcript of a talk in your language? You will see the talk page in English, like normal.

Hate this and want to see talk pages in English again? Just make English your language preference in your browser, using the same instructions above.

Learn much more about our Open Translation Project, 8,000 translators strong »