English soon won’t be the primary viewing language for Netflix, so the streaming service is on the hunt for translators.
Netflix just introduced HERMES, an online tool to help it find “the best translators around the globe.” The streaming service currently supports more than 20 languages ranging from Korean to Arabic and Polish, according to Netflix’s Thursday blog post, and it plans to expand to more.
“It’s hard to believe that just 5 years ago, we only supported English, Spanish and Portuguese.” the company wrote in the blog post. “We’re quickly approaching an inflection point where English won’t be the primary viewing experience on Netflix,”
Netflix calls HERMES the first online test and indexing system for translating subtitles from a major content creator. The company can use HERMES to not only vet translators, but also to pair them with assignments that play to their strengths.
Users interested in translating video into closed captions can take the tests here. HERMES has been available for two weeks, and thousands of people across the world “covering all represented languages” have already tried their hand, Netflix said.
