Some companies we’ve had the pleasure of working with have been massive, international companies. It makes sense that they would want their videos to reach as much of their audience as possible, so sometimes the discussion of having multi-lingual videos comes up. Yes, we can produce videos in different languages, but this is something that is best considered during pre-production (or even before that), and here’s why.
Creating videos in a different language is hard work, but going back to an older video and adapting it to a new language is even harder. Multi-lingual videos require many more things than a standard video. First you have the script translation and voice recording. For this, you need someone who really knows the language you’re translating to, because not all things translate across languages and your message might mean the wrong thing once translated.
When the script is translated and the voice is recorded, the new voice over rarely lines up with the other language’s voice over. This could mean that your video is a lot longer, or shorter, in a different language, which also means that we might have to add or lose some visuals.
If the video contains any text being shown on screen, all of that has to be translated as well. In this case as well, the text could be a lot longer or shorter in a different language, so the elements that make up the video might have to be adjusted. Text like bullet points would also have to be adjusted for timing with the new voice over, which means you need an animator that can listen to and understand the language to ensure that the words match up correctly.
If these things are considered early in the process of the video production, we can make it easier by making sure that the elements of the video are going to work across different languages to minimize having to recreate the video. If the video being multi-lingual comes up as an afterthought to the video, then the same video in two different languages might end up being two different videos in different languages.