Video translation: How to choose a professional video translator ?

Do you generate video content on a large scale? Then translating your videos into the right languages is essential for your content creation strategy.

More than just making your content accessible to everyone, you can then export your content internationally and benefit from cultural differences. Who knows, maybe you will have huge popularity in countries like Tunisia, Kenya, or Indonesia where digital is gaining popularity!

But if you want to conquer new territories, you need experts in new languages. With more than 5 years of experience in video translation, we give you our advice on finding the right subtitling service for you :).

Why translate your video?

Often overlooked, video translation is essential to grow your audience in other countries and in other languages. By adapting your video content into popular languages such as Spanish, Hindi, French, Mandarin, Russian, you mathematically increase your odds of being watched.

But, as explained, you can also benefit from the cultural enrichment with countries further away from your core audience. Here's especially why you should target lesser-known languages :

• You expose your video to cultures that may be more favorable to your ideas and messages.
• You make yourself more easily known across the globe
• You show some audiences that you are making an effort to translate their language and that you count on their support.
• You can learn new ways to connect with culturally diverse communities.

How can you achieve these goals? There are especially three ways to translate your video:

• Create a foreign-language dubbing or voice-over of your video
• Make a transcription of the audio of your video in the chosen language
• Create subtitles and text annotations in the desired language

Here we focus on the last option.

Subtitle translator: the benefits of a professional service

When you want to target different languages, it is imperative to learn a little more about the right subtitling procedures. Subtitle translation requires you to follow rules and meet standards to make your content accessible to the widest possible audience. These include, but are not limited to :

• Providing an accurate transcription of the audio in your video
• Performing a translation that is not literal but respects the different semantics and cultures of each language.
• Achieving a proper synchronization of subtitles, for optimal readability and comprehension
• Create subtitle files according to specific standards

Therefore, you might need to request the expertise of a professional or an external service to handle your translation projects. Here are some of the benefits of hiring one:

• You are sure to get a quality transcription and translation, approved by language experts.
• You save costs by collaborating with an external service provider
• You save time on your processes and your work-flow

So you'd better start your search!

What are the factors to base on when choosing a video translation service?

Now that you know why you should invest in the translation of your videos, how do you choose the right subtitling service? Considering the nature and scope of your project, here are all the factors you need to pay attention to:

• Your video workload: if you have a large project, it's best to turn to an agency. If you have smaller ones, freelance or subtitling solutions
• The languages you want to translate: not all services have the same expertise in terms of language
• Your deadlines: the services have more or less work capacity and each have different deadlines.
• The price of the service: to be taken into account, the price/hour of subtitling, the cost of credits and possible types of subscriptions.
• The technologies provided: some services have voice recognition technology. The more sophisticated this is, the more accurate and satisfactory the result will be.
• The user-friendliness of the platform: if the service also has a subtitle editing and personalization platform.
• The customer service quality. The customer support is not the same according to the offers.
• The range of features : transcription, subtitle customization, file formats, subtitle fonts, etc...

Professional video translation: the different types of service

To find the best video translation service, there are two types of offers to consider:

Automatic translation platform

As speech recognition technologies have generalized, subtitle generation and automatic translation offers have been developing. These services, by transcribing your video, also have integrated translation APIs, often more elaborate than Google Translate's. These algorithms, depending on how advanced they are in terms of deep learning, provide you with more or less accurate translations. Learn more about their technical capabilities.

The advantage of these tools is that you can manage the work yourself, and the cost is lower than a professional service. For medium-sized projects, this is a solution you can think about.

You can look at our solution on our website, Authôt.com, the automatic subtitling of YouTube, Facebook…

Professional translation services

These services connect you with a translation agency or a professional translator. They often have a large enough number of partners to find the most suitable agent for your project. In addition, you have easy ways to contact them about the progress of the project, and to discuss your expectations.

The advantage of these services is to deliver a professional and high-quality result. You can easily rely on their expertise, and you save time in your research. If you have large or complex projects, you can without hesitation entrust them with them.

There are for example 2m.com.au, betranslated.com…

But we also provide a professional service, which has the singularity of combining with our automatic subtitling platform. We'll explain it all to you.

Professional subtitle translation platform: Checksub

At Checksub, we made a bold move: to combine the performance of machine translation APIs with the expertise of translation professionals. Our service provides you with a complete platform that will transcribe and translate your subtitles but also put them in the hands of an expert.

Checksub is, in short, a platform for collaboration between experts and clients, where everyone finds value thanks to a user-friendly interface. Here are the precise features of our solution :

• An advanced speech recognition and translation API
• A collaborative interface with subtitlers and translators to manage your video project
• An automatic translation engine to translate your video, with 128 different languages available.
• A powerful and easy-to-use online subtitle editor

If you want to use our professional services, you can contact us.

We hope we'll help you find what you're looking for. If not, find the collaborator who will make your creations travel around the globe!