According to the online platform MarketingProfs.com, the year 2015 is known as the “Year of Video Marketing”, as more companies concentrate their marketing efforts on visually-appealing videos.
With videos you can potentially reach a much wider audience in a shorter period of time and, most importantly, without overwhelming your target audience with text. Cisco, the American multinational technology company, estimates that consumer internet video traffic will be 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2019 – a rise of 14% compared to 2014.
For businesses, video content offers huge marketing potential and, according to the Guardian, more than half of small companies are already making use of it. However, when you’re a multinational company – with a multinational customer base – the global use of video content needs some extra consideration.
Why cultural differences play an important role when you translate your video
No matter if your video is aimed at your staff or your customers, every company with a multinational reach is confronted with the challenge of breaking down the language barriers. For video content, this means that you need to translate the source text in your video into your target language.
Sometimes you may require the additional help of a professional transcription service before a translator can start the video translation. Another term that regularly comes up in connection with video translation is the word ‘localisation’ (or ‘localization’ if you’re living in North America). Video localisation goes one step further than a simple translation. The video translator aims to modify the message so it’s better suited to the target market. Compared to a video translation service, a video localisation service takes cultural differences into account.
Do your homework and research your target market
Once you’ve received your video translation back, you can choose between underlying your video with multilingual subtitles or add a voice over to your video. We advise that you do your homework and research your target market.
For example, the German-speaking-market is the largest dubbing market in Europe. When translated from English, German can expand as much as 30%. However, in Poland, subtitles are very popular for films. Subtitles are also very beneficial from a SEO-Point. Because there is more text for search engines to look through, more potential traffic can be diverted to your site.
With all the tips above, translating your video for foreign language distribution will be just as easy as working on the initial local version of your video.
If you would like to create a video that can easily be made multilingual read our step-by-step-guide.