How Does Chinese Video Translation Work?
A simple, concise, and replicable system in Chinese video translation and Mandarin voice-over projects helps us maintain high-quality deliverables to clients.
The goal is to meet the requirements and ensure that throughout the process, there are no compromised concepts and ambiguous words.
Working on a variety of projects – from Dynamic Earth show in Cantonese to a promotional video – has given the team to learn, to improve, and most importantly, give their best shot to each project.
Below are behind the scenes of Chinese video translation project workflow.
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Preparation of documents and tools for translation
We use a CAT Tool to import files and run the TM for the pre-translation. Depending on the workload, we allow clients to choose their preferred voice talent via our voice bank. Once they approved, we will prepare the documents to those translators, and discuss the deadline and availability of those translators
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Chinese Translation
We make sure that our project manager together with the team of translators to discuss the requirements and clarify issues or concerns. While we don’t micromanage and snoop each other’s work, we make sure that we track the time and so it will give us an overview of the progress. Every translator knows that there’s another line-up of proofreaders to check their work. So we make sure that despite the simultaneous workflow, we have a backup of the translator’s work and the proofreader.
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Proofreading
After the translators do their job, the next in line with have to check for omissions, typos, and errors. Reading them aloud while proofreading the texts gives room for proofreaders to review if there are words that don’t sound natural in Chinese when spoken or even written. Fluent, understandable, and succinct texts are the goal.
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Project Manager Does the Magic
The cycle doesn’t end here the project manager will also have his or her own time to work on the texts and check consistency in the terminology. The TM is useful in this process.
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The Subtitling
This is not a walk in the park. The captions must be accurately time-synced subtitles as the video plays. This is the tricky part as the translators need to divide the sentences and make sure it fits the character limit per line in the frame or video.
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QA
However, this doesn’t end here, and the team needs to have a final check of the subtitles in the video and compare it with the script or texts; they also need to check that the subtitles match the timeframe of the video. As every second counts in the video, there should never be discrepancies between the subtitles and the voice-over.
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Deliver the files
The team will deliver the video files or the formats that the client needs.