Localizing multimedia (Flash, QuickTime) - Part 2

Part 1 described the background education many companies (especially upper management) require when they want to have their multimedia files localized. This part describes what you, as localization project manager, need to know. This information is important for you to request and deliver the right things, but it's not very likely that upper management will be interested in it.

Assume content like a 60-second product introduction, with actors speaking on screen and graphical text in need of translation and layout.

1. As usual, you should plan for a glossary or terminology list. It's always important to ensure you use a properly current term for "pain relief" or "outfielder's glove," but the cost of opening up an already localized complete project to tweak a couple of words - particularly spoken words - can be prohibitive. If your in-country partner has approved of your terminology ahead of time, you'll save yourself headaches in the long run.
2. Pare down your cast for the localized version. If your commercial includes one female and two male actors, do you really want to pay voiceover fees for all three of them? Consider using the same voice for both males, and subtitling the female. When your budget gets bigger, you can spring for all three linguists.
3. Files are huge, so don't count on moving them over the Internet. You'll want the translation studio to work as far upstream as possible, so plan to give them the original video footage, not a compressed QuickTime or Shockwave Flash (.swf) file. These can be several GB in size for only a few minutes of video, so plan on moving DVDs or thumbdrives.
4. If the commercial was created as a digital studio file (e.g., Final Cut Pro), hand off the entire project, just as you would hand off all the surrounding files needed for a software localization project. This enables the localizers to open graphics, replace text and drop in the voiceover, then output localized versions on par in quality with the source version.
5. Studio time is not very flexible. Even though your movie has only 60 seconds of voiceover, you may need to book half- or even full-day linguistic talent in multiple languages. This can be a rude surprise when it seems to you that the original voice talent was nearly free (or so you thought). And, as stated above, opening and closing these projects to make apparently minor changes can run into major money for engineering time.
   

Clients are not always specific about the output and deliverable formats they want for these localized assets, so it may take a while to find somebody who will give you more details beyond, "We need the video in Japanese, and quickly." Part 3 will cover that.

Localizing multimedia (Flash, QuickTime) - Part 1

Localizing multimedia such as Flash files and QuickTime movies is a different pond of koi from localizing documentation, HTML and even software. Advertisements, videos and clips abound on the Web, mostly because they tell a story in a much more compelling way than does mere text. Also, it's becoming easier for content owners to record footage and to host it on their Web site.

It's a brave, new content world. And they want to localize it.

The first hurdle is that the media is not very well internationalized. The movie file on the Web is usually greatly compressed, with several layers crunched into one or two, and billions of bits discarded. Nobody needs all of that detail to see the clip, but you need it to localize it properly.

The second issue is that site owners rarely understand how the original was put together, let alone what it will take to localize it. They may know about superless splits, B-rolls, dub houses, producers and BetaSP, but you trying to get files - extremely large ones - from them, with all of the video, audio, graphics and effects to localize.

Finally, in the same way that most companies regard a software project in its original language, the content owners view the multimedia as core work product that is already behind them, and wonder why there's so much work/time/money involved in preparing it for an overseas audience.

Despite these hurdles, content owners do indeed want to go down this path. In Part 2, we'll explore a typical project in more detail.