Video Localization or Internationalization?

Oldrich Kraus

There’s no need to tout the advantages of video in this era. We all can see its omnipresence in our daily lives. There are all kinds of displays everywhere. And where is our attention drawn most? Why of course, to the ones with moving pictures. And this attention capture is far from the only huge advantage of video. Some say that we retain only 10% of what we read and 50% of what we see and hear. Even if these numbers are not real and just a perpetuation of some urban myth, it’s quite clear that video captivates us and leaves us with stronger impressions than just text or static images. If you’re in doubt, just try scrolling down some social media feed containing text status updates, images as well as videos. How often do you stop to examine a post containing only text, how often post with image and how often one with video? If you’re like most people, you usually scroll through the images, stop at the videos and ignore the text!

With advances in technology it is now much easier to create videos, and naturally, this form of communication is growing exponentially. If you want to get noticed or convey information more effectively, you have to employ video. And now; in times of remote working, various social and physical restrictions; and greatly enabled by technology, video plays ever greater role in our lives.

It’s almost hypocritical of me to not include under the title of this article a nice video presentation with voice-over, subtitles, various charts and what not, but hey!

As with everything, you can do something right or not so right, create a good product or a poor product. And the same goes for video. Especially if you are interested in presence in different countries (why else would you be reading this article?), you do not want to create one video, but a video for each of the locales you are interested in.

Many companies are making the same mistakes with videos as with all sorts of other products, be it some manufacturing setups, digital content or marketing strategies. Namely, they invent a product and business strategy specifically for their original market without any thought for future expansion and adaptation to foreign markets. Naturally, localization of digital content works basically as reinventing said content for the target markets. This is transcreation and adaptation and SEO optimizations for each language and all these other fancy words. But when the original is created without regard for future adaptation to different markets, there is a big danger of certain problems during this adaptation. Simply put, it will cost considerably more. And when talking about videos, this is even more true than with any other content.

As you could probably guess, and from our experience, the vast majority of companies still follow this process of content creation for a single language/locale and as a result end up paying more for adaptation to other languages.

So what are the things to keep in mind during video creation when one intends to localize these videos to different languages?

Maybe the best way would be to partner up with a localization provider before creating the original content and consult with them during the development and about the future strategy. Maybe even with a company that can manage more than just localizing company’s content, but managing promotion in target markets, maintaining websites, constantly improving SEO, perhaps creating content for social media campaigns and running them, and so on. But we digress, let’s just finish the article with a review of few simple points to keep in mind while creating videos for global audiences.

Content:

1. Create international content that applies globally, consider cultural sensitivities, refrain from local references, and information applicable only to certain markets, etc.

For instance, you may want to refrain from using Lumphini park as a reference to size and instead use something more prevalent everywhere in the world, such as football stadiums. While Lumphini park is known to most people in Southeast Asia, it won’t say much to people in the rest of the world.

2. During recording voice for the video go for slower speech which will make subtitles better readable and allow for different length of translation and speech duration in other languages. There are big differences in the speed and word length of some languages and English is among the ‘fastest’. While you may comfortably say 200 words per minute in one language, you would struggle to jam in more than 120 in others. What’s more, even if a text looks visually to take up the same space in different languages, the duration of the speech may be very different.
3. Refrain from too many visuals/important visuals in the bottom third of screen, so subtitles may fit there comfortably.
4. If possible, do not include speakers on-screen, so the localized audio will not have to be lip-synced, to avoid more localization effort and possible losses of meaning or mistakes (see point 2 above)

Form:

Form is as much, if not more, important as content and unfortunately, from our business experience, this is the area of the biggest pitfalls and extra costs.

Many managers are not aware of even the existence of video source files, not to mention the proper form of these files. Simply put, if one wants to localize a video, change the text in the on-screen titles, edit/remove any elements necessary for target audiences, one needs to have separate layers of this video. Such as all objects present in an animated video separately, or some camera footage separately, text boxes separately, text in them separately, and various overlaying images like for example logos separately. Each element is a different editable layer. Further, you will need all kinds of support files, e.g. font files for the text used.

All this is then mixed together in what is called rendering and the final video is created. These are the videos for consumption, for example formats MP4, AVI, etc. And these videos cannot be easily edited, as they do not contain separate layers for text for example. Let’s say you order creation of some animated videos with some on-screen text, nice pop-up bubbles, burnt-in subtitles and rotating logos in the corners. And the video agency delivers you an MP4 file, everything works, you are happy. But then you want to change some text in the video and the agency simply disappears. Boom, you’re in trouble. Having only the MP4 file, you won’t be able to change easily even the subtitles, which will be just part of the one layer of video that is the MP4.

Anyway, here are some points listed:

1. Create videos in video editing software (After Effects, Premiere, Final Cut,…) with all text intended for translation as proper text layers with editable text. Organize layers in keeping with the best practices, refrain from creating unnecessary duplicates that bloat the size of the video project, and store all files in one place. Do not reference your internal online locations, the localization company will not be able to access those and have all the necessary files for work.
2. If possible, use fonts that cover almost all languages such as Arial Unicode. Or work with a localization company to understand that for some languages some fonts are not compatible or suitable.
3. When sending video for localization, include ALL files from the video project. For example for Adobe After Effects include project file (.aep), and all footage, fonts, images, etc.
4. Store audio script together with the video and provide it for localization, along with all other useful materials such as subtitle files with time codes, etc.

You probably wouldn’t believe how much work is done transcribing something for which script existed at some point, but just got lost somewhere along the line or how many extra myriads of hours are spent worldwide editing videos in improper formats or hours spent looking for missing video assets.