5 Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Video Localization Strategy

Increasingly, companies around the world (and not just the media and entertainment giants) are producing video content to connect with their audiences and offer even more added value to their customers. Videos have a myriad of different use cases:  marketing campaigns, elearning lessons, and end-user product tutorials, to name a few. Some brands have found video to be a great way to deliver their digital service and a dynamic user experience (UX). For example, fitness, wellness, and health companies boomed during the pandemic when people couldn’t go outside to exercise. Fitbit, Calm, Nike, Freeletics, and ASICS Digital, among others, offer virtual, video-based training sessions to motivate their customer base to stay fit from home. 

Adding video to your localization strategy can be a challenge. The workflows are completely different from more traditional, text-based localization. Your current vendor may not necessarily specialize in video localization and they might not be the right partner to design a localization strategy for your video content. You want to be sure that you’re making the right choices because video content on your platform will have a great impact on user experience and brand reputation. And, since it’s usually more expensive to produce multilingual videos, you want to be sure you get the best results.

What are the main challenges of localizing video content?

At Nimdzi, we’ve talked to a variety of companies, and these are some of the recurrent challenges that they find when developing their video localization strategies:

• I need to localize our videos into X languages but I have a tight budget. I didn’t anticipate video localization being so much more expensive than text localization. My company can’t or won’t provide a higher budget at the moment.
• We have localized videos before but our customers complained about the quality.
• I don’t know how to optimize our workflows, what files to send to help my vendors, what guidelines to give to the product team, etc.
• I don’t know what technology to use.
• I can’t find the right talent to localize our videos.
• The turnaround is longer than I expected and my product team is complaining. 

Tips to get the most out of your video localization strategy

1. Deliver the best possible user experience for your global audiences

It’s important that you know the preferences of your audience when it comes to video. There are certain historical preferences towards dubbing, subtitling, and voice over depending on the market.

However, these trends are ever-evolving and preferences also depend on the type of content and the platform where the video is consumed. For example, a Spanish millennial may go to the cinema and watch a dubbed movie, then open Netflix and watch a subtitled show, and then follow an IG account that publishes stories only in English. It really depends on the context and the target demographic, so it’s advisable to analyze your audience and decide on what will work best for them.

2. Decide on your strategy based on content type

Moreover, it’s important that you decide what your video localization strategy will be based on the type of content, the priority, and the impact it has on user experience and brand reputation. For example, you could categorize your content asking yourself these questions:

• Is the video intended for the public or for internal employee use?
• Is the video live or pre-recorded?
• Is the aim of the video educational (learning material or tutorials)?
• Is the aim of the video to promote the brand and appear on social media?
• How will users watch the video (smartphone, computer, TV)?
• What else will users be doing while watching the video?

For example, think about fitness videos or cooking videos. Users will likely be doing something else while playing the video, so maybe subtitles won’t be the best option to localize that type of video content, even if that’s the preferred localization mode in a given market.

3. Plan the budget

Video localization is usually more expensive than text localization, especially if it involves human voice recording (dubbing or voice over). For example, dubbing a 15-minute English video into Spanish with a professional voice talent can cost around USD 2,000 while subtitling can cost around USD 200 (10 times less). That doesn’t mean you have to go with the cheapest option, of course. Again, you have to think about the best user experience for your audience and the context of the video, and plan your budget accordingly.

4. Choose the right vendors

Partnering with the right vendors is essential to succeeding in your video localization strategy. If you’re looking for high-quality video localization, it might be a better option if you partner with experts in the field. The Nimdzi 100 report highlights some of the biggest media localization companies in our industry. Whether you pick single language studios or multilingual vendors will depend on your processes, expectations, and the scalability that you’re looking for. Furthermore, you can opt for a hybrid approach working with a multilingual vendor but selecting boutique studios for specific markets.

5. Choose the right technology

Once you figure out what you need and what your video localization strategy will look like, you can start thinking about how technology can help you streamline your processes and maybe decrease costs. In the Nimdzi Language Technology Atlas, we include hundreds of interesting tools and review the latest trends in the multimedia localization industry.

Some examples include:

• Synthetic voices: For example, you want to localize internal videos in different languages but you may have a limited budget so you’d rather go with synthetic voices.
• Automatic transcription and subtitles: In order to provide accessibility, you want to caption all your videos that appear on social media.
• Remote recording: You want to have access to talent all over the world, even in cities where there are no recording studios and you want to use remote recording solutions to increase your options. 

It’s all about the right UX for your global audience

When you’re designing your video localization strategy, you need to first think about how your audience will use your videos, in which format, on which platform, and in what context. You want to provide the best UX possible and, at the same time, get a return on your investment. In order to do so, it’s important to partner with the right people and put in place the right workflows and tools that will help drive efficiencies and deliver a high-quality product based on the criteria that you have decided upon.

If you’re not sure what’s the best way to go, come and #TalkToNimdzi.