Rabid reseller: Translating the tubes

We are totally over being asked to watch supposedly hilarious YouTube videos in some language we don’t even speak. Okay, language is no barrier with lolcats. Or when it’s some dude getting smashed in the face with a fish. But when it’s a talking head, you really need to understand the language. 

Here at Rabid Reseller, we always try and turn adversity into advantage. So we’ve written an app that adds subtitles to YouTube. We’re calling it TranslateTube.

The first person we tested it on was the nephew, aka Sk8rboi. It’s in his job description. Clause 14: when, required, be a human guinea pig. Well, he wasn’t impressed. Told us it was pointless. Said he could already understand the dude in the video so why bother to translate? Well, how were we to know the little brat was multi-lingual? Must be that fancy private school Uncle Tony sent him to. 

Anyway, he’s unusual – most people can’t understand those foreign YouTubes so we reckon we’re onto a winner this time. And we know how this app business works because we learned about it in the webinar advert that popped up fortuitously on our Facebook news feed. “Everything you need to know about getting rich selling apps. Just $5000 for our 10-minute webinar.” 

So, Sk8erboi signed on for the webinar, mainly because his new Facebook GF had also signed on, so she could learn how to make a fortune selling her own app. It’s called “Like my page now, so you can prove to all your FB friends that you knew me before I was famous”. According to Sk8erboi, his new GF, Missy Croon Louder, is a soon to be discovered actor, singer, dancer, musician, poet, novelist and social media wizard, who’s already a legend with 15 subscribers to her 47 YouTube channels, and dozens of friends on her multiple Facebook pages.

Somehow, Rabid ended up paying for both their webinar tickets, but Missy managed to get an early-bird, multi-view price because she knows the presenter. Well, it turns out she’s related to the presenter, but heck, on Facebook everyone is related to everyone, or so it seems. Rabid spent the next few days fine-tuning the app, while they watched the 10-minute webinar. Once you pay, you can watch it again for no extra cost. 

This turned out to be essential, as they both had to watch it 50 times before they’d seen it all. Something to do with important Tweets and Facebook messages coming through while the webinar was screening. As Sk8erboi and Missy explained it, “Uncle Rabid, 10 minutes is like, well, forever! You just don’t understand how much important stuff comes up in 10 minutes. And if you don’t reply for a whole 10 minutes people will think you’re, like, dead or something!”

Armed with their newfound app marketing skills we launched TranslateTube and sat back to watch the PayPal account fill up with the 99c download fees. We expected a rush from Aussies trying to figure out what New Zillunders were really saying, but so far, sales have been less than stellar. But we remain hopeful. The app can automatically detect and translate Ahhmerricun, Seth Afrikun, Eyerush and Scuttish. And we’re working on the harder languages like Devonish, Cornwallish and Cockney.

Gotta go! Tubes to translate!