The Business Case For Deploying Multi-Language Video
How can companies best serve multi-language video to a global audience? A panel at the 2013 Streaming Media East conference in New York City explored various solutions.
“We’re seeing some common patterns,” said Marc Osofsky, SVP and CMO for translation company Lionbridge Technologies. Companies are increasingly creating their own video studios and taking that work away from agencies. They’re creating video for marketing, training, corporate communications, and other areas. They’re getting sophisticated with green screens and other effects, and are hiring staff away from agencies. Osofsky said he’s surprised at how quickly that entire process is happening. Companies then struggle with how to translate their videos for other countries.
Traditional approaches to translating video, such as getting a professional and creating a voice over track, and “too slow and too costly,” said Osofsky. Going with Google Translate produces subtitles cluttered with errors and leads to viewer complaints. Solutions that offer fast turnaround and low price come at varying degrees of quality. Companies may decide to go with lower quality solutions for internal use, to save money, but spend more for higher-quality customer-facing videos.
Some experts now believe that 20 percent of all corporate communications should be video, Osofsky said. Keeping up with that demand is tough: companies currently face weeks of delay when launching new products since they can’t create multi-language video fast enough to keep up with their launch cycles.
One solution to getting multiple-language support quickly, Osofsky said, is to create keywords in that new language and then crowdsource the actual translation. He’s seeing a trend in doing translation that way.
Other speakers suggested that content owners wait to see ithere is interest from a country before investing in a separate language track for it.
There’s no one standard use case for video translation, Osofsky noted. One area where he’s seeing activity is in call support. Many companies are trying to replace phone support, which is expensive, with online support videos. Translating those videos into multiple languages makes them much more useful and delivers big cost savings. Osofsky said he has one client saving from $5 to $10 million annually after translating support videos.
Scroll down to view the full discussion:
The Business Case For Deploying Multi-Language Video
This panel is an opportunity to learn the economics and business case for producing and distributing video in multiple languages. Each participant will discuss best practices, what’s ahead, distribution options, and the economics of their investments in reaching the emerging world in video.
Moderator: David Orban, CEO, Dotsub
Speaker: Tim Tyler, eLearning Manager, Coldwell Banker
Speaker: Santiago Muro, COO, WOBI
Speaker: Marc Osofsky, SVP, CMO, Lionbridge
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