Multimedia localization with Wordbee Translator translation management system

If you have been in contact with localization for some time, you may agree that certain industries are more challenging than others in translation and all internal processes. One of these industries is media localization, so in this article, we need to pay special attention to audiovisual localization, which involves media types such as advertising, explanatory video, online learning, corporate videos, movies and television.

There are many aspects to consider in the localization process of audiovisual, such as scripted translation with time coding, localized dubbing of voice actors, cultural differences, and so on. If a part is not going as planned, it will affect the entire project and may cost the customer a lot of money.

So, what makes audiovisual localization so complicated? Let's talk about it right away.

Audiovisual localization challenge

Length matching

One of the biggest challenges of audiovisual localization is that all translations must match the length of the master. Some languages ​​are naturally longer than others, so translators will naturally ask for a longer time, "just 2 seconds." But the length is not negotiable, because "only 2 seconds" may mean that the animation needs to be extended and re-rendered. The project must be returned to the action designer and then the entire video is changed by it. All the extra work will obviously incur additional costs, and the customer may be angry because it may cost 10,000 euros in two seconds.

Cultural understanding

Video production companies have no choice but to rely solely on their language service providers to have a good understanding of the culture of the target area. Real localization includes more than just translation. You may want to consider whether the voice actor should be male or female, whether you need to adapt any animation, such as changing a street sign or license plate, or the background sound should sound more like "walla, walla" or "rhubarb, rhubarb".

Technical file format

From a partial technology perspective, one of the problems faced by service providers in audiovisual localization is that there is no framework for file formats. Unlike other industries that use XLIFF, data is transferred using different tools in each step, a process that cannot be standardized. Animations are adapted in Adobe After Effects using XML, audio engineering tools such as Nuendo can be used to process CSV files, and familiar subtitles are processed in SRT format. These are just a few, but as you can see, there are a lot of conversions that need to be done during the localization of media files.

The key to audiovisual localization: plan ahead!

Although you should never start any work before the finalization of the image (which means the editing phase has been completed), it is critical for the translation provider to participate in the program from the start. After the image determines a version, a stage timestamp is created to determine the location of the text. For each piece of text, the language service provider needs to mark the time code entered and the time code of the output, meaning when each piece of text begins and ends.Legal translation services after matching timestamps and text saves time in the long run.