It’s been two years since TED Talks enlisted fans around the globe to translate its videos into many languages through its Open Translation Project powered by dotSub, a crowd-sourced translation platform.

Today, some 20,000 videos have been translated into 88 languages by over 6,000 volunteers, says Michael Smolens, founder of New York-based dotSub.

We spoke with him earlier this week at the Streaming Media East conference in Manhattan

The platform is being used by many organizations from big global companies like Adobe to religious organizations in India, he explains.

dotSUB Social Media Week panel: (L to R) Michael Smolens, G. Gooder, Klaus Steeg, Robin Kent & Paul Farkas.

As news from Egypt’s revolution streamed across the web, and several protester videos from Cairo appeared in dotSUB’s website for translation, Michael Smolens, Founder and Chairman of dotSUB was leading a panel discussion about how to reach global audiences with multi-lingual video for Social Media Week at the Paley Center for Media / NYC.

Smolens described how global Internet and online video usage are exploding, and led the panel in illustrating how translation and subtitling of video content can increase cross-cultural communications, educational benefits and engagement opportunities for all organizations. Lively discussion focused on how new technologies promote distribution of video that’s accessible to more people around the world.

“Opportunities opened up because of new technologies,” said Klaus Steeg, Managing Director / NYC of OSHO International, describing how community translations of their thousands of hours of single-language videos were turned into an innovative revenue stream via YouTube’s soon-to-be public pay-per-view rental store.

“Traffic Math,” is how Brightcove’s G. Gooder calibrates the growing business value based on the quantity, quality, distribution and devices on which users can discover online video today. Video examples from NHL Player’s Association, GE, U.S. Army and ICANN demonstrated his points and led to further discussion of monetization possibilities to pay for it all..

Robin Kent, Founder of The Fearless Group, discussed new advertising models and an ingenious initiative to bring music fans together with their favorite bands through lyrics subtitling and translations. A charming music video sample illustrated the possibilities.

SocialTV, the concept and the startup company, were described by Paul Farkas, Collaborator-in-Residence at Watchitoo.com, as largely about the conversation around movies, TV and online video. Interactive SocialTV can add shared viewing and storytelling as well as elements of co-creation including adding subtitles and translations.

Lots of Q&A continued the conversation, so the dotSUB team knows we’ll need to present more of these sessions about global online video at other venues soon!

Sign up today for our panel discussion, part of Social Media Week New York:

Tower of Babel v2.0 – How to Reach Global Audiences with Multi-Lingual Video

This panel will address some of the newest options for video captioning and translation services and issues of communications quality vs. speed vs. cost. What quality is “good enough” for social networks, education, corps., activists, politics, diplomacy? The qualities and risks of computerized “machined” audio to text captions and translations will be examined, as will crowd-sourced captioning and translation models; who is the crowd—general public, fans, employees, paid professionals—and how can translations enhance audience engagement? Distribution of multi-lingual video across all platforms, increasingly mobile, is a critical factor in reaching bigger audiences as is measuring ROI/SROI to make it worthwhile.

Speakers:
Michael Smolens, Founder/Chair/CEO, dotSUB
G. Gooder, VP, Strategic Accounts, Brightcove
Klaus Steeg, Managing Director, OSHO International

Hosted at the People & Society Hub at The Paley Center of Media on Friday, Feb 11 2011, from 12 PM to 2 PM

New to Social Media Week? Social Media Week (SMW) is a global platform that connects people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media.

Delivered primarily through a network of internationally hosted biannual conferences and online through social and mobile media, Social Media Week brings hundreds of thousands of people together every year through learning experiences that aim to advance our understanding of social media’s role in society.

Check out all the other cool events organized from Feb 7 to Feb 11 at Social Media Week New York.