How do companies translate their client's videos?
With globalization and digitalization, communication supports in many fields are multiplying. Digitalization also enables international accessibility to the same courses, games, services, sources of information… That’s why, even with services like Google translation, translation companies and professionals are getting more and more work and on a different level. So today how do videos and digital supports are translated? How do translation companies translate their client’s videos?
How video translation works
According to pangeanic.com, the size of the translation industry is quite significant actually. The good news for “translators who worry about the technology may one day replace human translation is that only parts of the translation job can be automated by now. Despite huge advancements in technology, machine translation is an enabler to do translation faster or for final professional publishing”.
Moreover, it is not expected that “in the near future, translations will be entirely automatic translations. The increase in the demand of professional translation services is high”. Whether the source language is English or another language.
In 2019, more and more companies have to deal with an increasing number of videos for different activity sectors. For a long time, translation companies started their work from a text, a written support. Nowadays, it seems that text is a less popular form of communication, and it is getting more frequently replaced by videos. The video format has a lot of advantages, but the thing is, for translation, it quite changes the traditional process. Which is for the best.
How does it works?
This way, how to translate a video, which are visuals without any text, writing?
First, of course it won’t change their professionalism and their work in itself but they will definitely need to add steps with a video to translate. Video production and video translation are very specifics and require special techniques.
In fact, good transcription services, alongside expert translation, is art. Which requires an amazing level of understanding, knowledge, skills and tools.
This way, if we combine the forces of a translation expertise and an automatic solution, we can offer great video translation quality for all kind of sectors such as: audio-visuals, education, media institutions, public institutions, private companies…
Video translation expertise and services can include:
• Online videos
• Offline videos
• Videos for the intranet
• Foreign subtitling and translation
• Foreign closed captioning and translation…
Video translating: a professional automatic and smart process
Now that you understand more the different challenges and possibilities of video translation, you can learn more about the process. In fact, the aim is to create a video transcription based on the source language and then export it into a text format, for instance, subtitles. Translators will then translate the text or immediately the subtitle.
In fact, it doesn’t change much the translators’ work, but they just need more upstream material. With these new intermediaries, the process is more complex.
First step is to reach a professional translation agency.
The second step is to choose your format. Choosing a format implies voice overs, subtitles, captions or a combination of them.
Whatever the process for translating video content, the priority is always to ensure 100% accuracy between the original and the translated final version.
The process is divided into more or less five steps:
• Transcribe (in a subtitle or caption format directly)
• Translate
• Create the translation files into the wanted format (text or subtitle)
• Timecoding (check the timecodes/the synchronization of the subtitles display on the video)
• Video editing (subtitles incrustation or translated text into visual, shaping)
That is a summary of the process, but it gives a hint of what is involved. In addition, it is important to add quality checking to this list.
Thanks to our innovative Automatic Speech Recognition technology, the automatic transcription of audio/videos files into texts are a major positive move in this field. It allows to save a tremendous amount of time in creating the text or the subtitle of an audio or video file. Even if, human proofreading after the process are crucial for a realistic and professional rendering.
Video translation: transcription is key
For only one video, translation can be indeed a longer and difficult process, with sometimes several subtitles tracks. Which explains the importance to use transcription in order to create the original subtitles. Transcription is indeed essential.
A video transcription is the translation of the video’s audio track to a text version. It first includes the spoken words in the video of course, but transcriptions may include also other relevant audio details, such as background noises, music, cuts in the speech…
So sometimes it is better to have an online solution, to make subtitles created by professionals.
When do you need it?
• For videos on website: transcribing your videos and posting the text on your website with relevant keywords will help in SEO ranking
• For subtitling: vital for viewers who have trouble with accent recognition, hearing and those who cannot understand a spoken language…
An important part in video translation is about international accessibility and more generally digital accessibility for all.
With professional transcription services, you can keep and share the text form of videos, films…and convert them in other supports. This way, it can be very interesting to optimize.
In conclusion, you should understand now that video translating is evolving, and it isn’t an easy process if you want a professional result. Don’t hesitate to benefit from Authôt’s expertise for all your international and companies’ videos. You will see that transcription is essential in your tomorrow’s strategy.
Authôt. You speak. We write.