YouTube, introduced the translation feature on its desktop website a while ago, and it has proven useful, especially for long videos. It helps you find a specific area or extract your favorite quote by searching the auto-generated text of the video.
It certainly feels like the average length of YouTube videos has increased over the past few years. Forget 10-minute clips – most of the videos in my subscription feed are routinely over half an hour these days, while some video trials and podcast uploads take up to four hours. With that total playing time, finding your favorite quotes or chapters can be a complete headache. Transcriptions make it much easier to search for specific parts of a video, and now they seem to have made their way to mobile devices.
Until now, you had to stay connected to YouTube’s desktop site to see the full text of your chosen upload. With this new feature, you don’t need to sit at your computer to navigate through a script. Once posted, you can click the “Show Transcript” button below the video’s expanded description, sandwiched between the provided episodes and other suggested uploads from the channel.
Unfortunately, without the ability to search between lines directly, it can be slightly less useful than the desktop version.
As of now, some users are reporting the new feature implemented in native Android app. Below the description of the video there is a special “Show Dump” There is a button. The text itself is quite similar to the desktop version, only adapted to the mobile phone’s user interface.
Like most Google apps updates, this one appears to be server-side, so you may have to wait until it becomes available to you as well.