Video content in a YouTube channel and on the website, from Facebook to television broadcasts – in up to 37 different languages and more than 40 different countries... Swiss Precision Diagnostics' (SPD) premium product Clearblue® has significant global reach. This makes localizing marketing videos a challenging mission.
When localizing health media content, it's not just important to stay consistent with the company's industry specific term base and translate each technical term correctly and identically each time. The company's tone of voice needs to be translated just as accurately into the different linguistic and cultural contexts of the targeted markets. This doesn't only apply to the text, but even so to the speaker's physical tone of voice – and it can easily lead to unexpected challenges, for instance when words and sentences become longer in another language.
Altogether, mass video localization projects mean a logistic and technical challenge, presenting constant needs for adjustments which can be time and resource consuming. Here's how Acolad helped SPD to minimize their video localization investment, while maximizing the return on investment:
The customer's challenge: Complex, decentralized video localization
Previously, SPD had each video adaptation for the 40 targeted countries in Europe, North, Central and South America either managed locally, in the respective country, or in some cases by an agency with an international presence. This was a highly decentralized approach that resulted in inconsistent branding, lack of transparency on costs, time consuming processes when dealing with issues – and ultimately lower, inconsistent quality. SPD needed a more efficient and effective approach to serve 37 different languages.
Crucial for a Life Science company is also to prevent discrepancies between existing glossaries and the different translations – hence the need for a comprehensive terminology program, impeding outdated and unapproved terminology, multiple translations for key terminology and lack of harmonization between term bases and final translated files. Acolad had already provided this indispensable base in a previous step.
The solution, part I: Centralization of the video localization workflows
Alignment from the beginning is key; now, each project begins with a kick-off call between SPD and Acolad's multimedia localization team, including the director of the voiceover recording. This ensures perfect understanding of the video's exact purpose and communication goal, of the requested tone of voice and overall feeling.
The next crucial step at an early stage is Acolad's feedback on the voiceover's feasibility, in terms of length – as English texts are often shorter than their localized translations. If conflicts are predictable for Acolad's experts, we inform SPD immediately, so that they can shorten the original text on their own terms, and consistency and quality of translation and voiceover are guaranteed.
The resulting English storyboard will be translated by Acolad's Linguists. In close alignment, SPD's respective Country Manager and possible further instances, such as the Board of Health, approve the result – for us to continue with the next step: the recording of the voiceover, adapted to the local language. A last circle of approval from SPD's side and, if applicable, final changes from Acolad conclude the workflow, before SPD receives the final, localized version.
The solution, part II: Behind the scenes, terminology management and logistics come into play
But it's also behind the scenes, so to speak, that perfect customer service makes all the difference. We had already built the terminology base to guarantee the quality and consistency of translations to all 37 languages: with a monolingual master term base as the starting point, containing key terms, contextual examples and product categorization. Specialized Linguists had translated this comprehensive base to all required languages.
Online deployment efficiently distributes the term base to the Linguists, in all languages and industry-standard formats, so that each of them always knows the exact translation, to be used consistently for each term. Annual updates ensure the continuous improvement of program quality and efficiency.
Finally, the deployment of the videos through different channels in each country – TV being one of them – is a potentially complex and time-consuming task. Our support eases these processes and frees bandwidth of our client, bringing in our experience in this area.
The result: Complex video localization, coming easy
The quality of SPD’s localized videos has significantly improved and freed our client from resource consuming rework. The localization cycles have become increasingly succinct and efficient, with a centralized single point of contact between SPD and Acolad, instead of each SPD market managing their own localization, with all workflows involved.
Within Acolad, the standardized processes mean less query management among Linguists and Service Managers, which also contributes to improved quality and substantial cost savings for the client every year – yielding a worthwhile return on investment. And our client now has total transparency of spend, thus keeping costs under full control.
This is the result of a trustful cooperation: SPD sees Acolad more as a partner than a mere supplier, which allows us an in-depth understanding of their products and markets. We not only collaborate with SPD at every level of the process, but also partner directly with their creative agency. As a result, we can perfectly adapt and apply our comprehensive suite of services, with translation, video engineering and technical expertise – for a continued first-class customer experience.
Curious about our multimedia localization success story with SPD?
Watch our video case study to learn more!
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