'This is exactly what we have been needing! Now families can have a shared reading moment at home with their kids no matter what their home language is.'
 — Head of EAL/D, St John's Anglican College

That's how one of our pilot schools summed up the response when we trialled multilingual subtitles with families and classrooms earlier this year. It's exactly the outcome we hoped for: turning story time into something the whole family can share, no matter what language is spoken at home. One grandparent's reaction, relayed by an Italian-speaking family, put it even more simply: 'Music to the grandparents' ears!'

Most families who participated in the pilot said watching stories in their home language strengthened their family's connection to culture and language, and 96 percent wanted access to more subtitled stories. Teachers saw it too, from younger students lighting up at seeing their first language written down, to EAL/D learners drawing new connections between English and home languages shared with classmates.

This Term 4, we're making sure more schools, libraries and families get to have that same experience. 18 StoryBox Hub stories are available to all subscribers with subtitles in 14 languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Greek, Italian, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Bengali, Japanese, Serbian, Swahili and Spanish.

Additionally, we’ve made the switch to a new video player specifically to support rolling multilingual subtitles out past the pilot to our wider subscriber base, so we can start gathering real feedback and usage data at scale. It gives subtitles a consistent, custom-styled look across web, iOS and Android, with more font options (including one designed for dyslexic readers), so the experience above holds up wherever a family or classroom is watching from. We've also fixed the skip intro button, so getting straight to story time is that much smoother. With proper reporting on how subtitles are used, language by language and story by story, we can keep growing the program based on real demand rather than guesswork, and add the languages our community actually wants next.

Whether you're a teacher building an inclusive classroom library, a librarian serving a multilingual community, or a family after story time in more than one language, Term 4 is the time to read together.

Browse the titles now available with multilingual subtitles.

Read the EduGrowth case study.