Working with a client with many experiences of localization services and working with a client who hasn’t had a clear idea about the workflow of localization project is different. When you are the first localization service provider (LSP) that your client works with, you need to take more time in enlightening them on the necessary procedures in a project but since you have more specialized knowledge than the client, your suggestion and opinions are valued more. You can have more opportunities to convince the client in choosing the most suitable localization practices in your opinion.

In the course Localization Practicum, our team Anaximander was so happy to provide localization services for the National Museum of Marine Science & Technology in Taiwan. After the initial communication, we found out that we are first LSP that the museum works with. Knowing this made us think about what we could do to ensure that this project can carry out smoothly.

Client meeting

The first thing we did was scheduling a meeting with the client, creating a chance for both parties to know about each other. We introduced each team member’s role to the client and knew more about the structure of the client’s team so that we could know which person to reach when we had a specific question. We believed that even though the client didn’t directly communicate with the majority of our team members except for the PM, they had a better idea of what we would do and knew that there was a professional team working for them.

When we communicated with our client during the meeting, we paid attention to the words we used. Instead of mentioning a lot of terms specific to localization industry to perplex the client, we tried to explain the procedures in the most understandable way. This mindset was held every time when we communicated with the client, no matter at the meeting or in emails.

Also, client meeting helped us to confirm client’s goals and needs, and clarify what services we could provide. For example, when the client wanted us to provide some suggestions of the layout design of the website, we explained with them the usual services provided by an LSP and kindly said no to this since it was beyond our capacity to do so. We should clearly build a proper expectation of our client to our future work in the client meeting.

Start small 

At the beginning of the project, the client just wanted us to help them localize a brochure. At the same time, we also thought that it would be better if the client also localizes their landing page into more languages besides Chinese and English. We deemed that we were capable to complete the task and were trying to get the approval of the client. However, since that was the first time that we cooperated, and the client did not feel so assured to give us access to the administration of their official website, we couldn’t obtain the approval at that time. However, as our project proceeded, the client believed in us more. We then reminded them of the possibility of helping them localize the website, and they agreed with it. For clients who just began to use the service with LSP, they usually hesitate to launch multiple projects at the same time. However, we can start small and as long as we win the client’s trust, we can begin to offer our other services.

Continuous communication

When working with a client who hasn’t so many experiences of LSPs, communication cannot be emphasized more. For most of the time, even though the delivery is not yet realized, we still have to keep on informing the client of the project process and status, so that they can feel more assured. In our project, we managed to report the project status to the client on a weekly base and thus maintained a good communication with the client.

 

There are a lot of interesting videos on Youtube and thanks to the automatically generated subtitles, the audience can better understand the dialogues or storylines. However, most of the videos are only endowed with English subtitles. The good news is: it is not as difficult as we think to add subtitles to your favorite videos! In this article, I am going to show you how I added bilingual subtitles to a video within a few steps.

 

Step 1: Obtain resources

For this project, I would like to use one of the asdfmovies, a cartoon series directed by a Youtuber named Tom Ska. The videos are famous for the cute figures and their mean but interesting conversations.

I downloaded the video and some background music that I planned to add to the video using 2 websites: PickVideo and Online Video Converter.

When I downloaded the video from Youtube, I also leveraged the automatically generated transcripts so that I just needed to add some minor changes to these subtitles later.

 

Step 2: Add an opening

This step is totally omittable, but I just wanted to add a cover picture just for fun. I found out that iMovie is actually very useful and handy for Mac users, and VSDC for Windows users, or Adobe After Effects for anyone who want more fancy features.

I used iMovie to add a cover picture, an animated title in dual languages and background music to the video. Because of the flexibility of iMovie, I completed this step very smoothly.

Step 3: Create subtitles

VisualSubSync is used in this step to add subtitle.

First of all, I created a project in VisualSubSync and change the settings such as maximum duration and maximum number of characters per line according to Netllfix’s standards.

Then, I started to select each time frame and add the corresponding subtitle to it. VisualSubSync automatically generates a srt file for us. If we just want the target language to appear in the video, we can save the project and then either replace the content in that srt file with the target language or import the file to CAT tools such as Memsource to translate it. However, if we want both the source and the target language to appear, we couldn’t merge the 2 srt files in one nor make the subtitles of two srt files appear at the same time in VisualSubSync. In this case, I just add the target language in the second line of each scene.

In terms of subtitle translation, since the dialogues are too fast and contain a lot of humor, which is hard to translate, there is no point in transliterating each line. Therefore, I also take cultural difference into consideration when translating these humorous conversation, trying to find another way to re-display the humor.

For example, in the following dialogue, instead of directly saying “it was pain” in Chinese, I say that “it was a fist sign” so that Chinese audience can better understand the gist.

There was something on your face

我看到你的脸上有东西

It was pain

一个拳印

Step 3: Test and burn

After adding the subtitles, we should run the error check to see the error report. Since the dialogues in this video are usually very fast, most of my errors show that the subtitles overlap with insufficient blank or the segments are too fast. To solve these issues, I have to manually extend the length of these segments by typing a different beginning time and end time.

When all the errors are solved, the subtitle is finished. I loaded the completed srt file with the video in a video player to preview the outcome. After that, I use Handbrake to burn the subtitle to the video so that the subtitle is integrated with the video.

Now, it is time to enjoy this video.

This is an interesting project. Also, besides, using VisualSubSync, we can try other subtitle editing tools such as Aegisub are ArcTime. They are very user-friendly.

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In the group project for the course Software & Game Localization, our group localizes a Java game called Tetris. In this portfolio, I would like to share with you what we’ve done for this project and the problems we’ve solved.

In the course Website Localization in Middlebury Institute of International Studies, students are required to carry out a group project to introduce a technology relative to website localization. This article is a portfolio of our project showcase on a JavaScript Library named jQuery I18n. Please feel free to see our project assets here.

Translation management system(TMS) is a beneficial platform for localization managers, translators and engineers. It stores translation files and automates many processes. In the course Translation Management System, Professor Adam Wooten leads us to learn in depth and use SDL WorldServer Web-based TMS  and encourage us to think about some heat topics about TMS. This portfolio is a summary of what we have covered in this course.

Purchasing a translation management system (TMS) is a big investment for companies. Besides money, efficiency is also a great concern. Staff need to spend more time in learning to use the new system and adapting themselves to a different working module.

 

The growing cloud technology not only improves machine translation (MT) and benefits language service providers (LSP) and translators, but also breeds translation crowdsourcing, a new solution besides MT and translation rendered by LSPs.

XTRF is a powerful management system that many LSPs and localization departments adopt. XTRF tremendously caters to localization project management because it integrates salesperson, client, project manager, vendors and engineers into a system and automates many processes.