Our customer, a company specialising in the medical training industry, asked us to prepare the translation of instructional videos into Ukrainian due to an increased demand for training materials.
This institution conducts and organises postgraduate training for people with higher education in health care. At the same time, it participates in the development of the health care system and carries out research activities. It is involved in the education and training of professional medical staff, including doctors, dentists, pharmacists and laboratory diagnosticians. Their purpose is to prepare highly qualified personnel to operate in the health care system.
We started our task by investigating their needs. They opted for preparing subtitles and translating them with proofreading by a native speaker.
The customer sent us 19 films in the mp4 format. The subject matter of the films concerned the organisation of health care in Poland.
Since there was a lot of material and the deadline for completing the order was not very long, we decided to use an automatic subtitling software in order to speed up the translation process.
By using special subtitling software, the project manager generated a .srt file from each film, with automatic subtitles in the source language. These files were then sent to the translator.
Automatic subtitling software has many advantages, as they allow the subtitles to be quickly created in a given language along with the time codes. However, it should be remembered that subtitles created in this way may help to familiarise the viewer with the content of the film, but are not suitable for professional distribution. The .srt file created by the software needs to be verified to ensure that the time stamps are correct. The length of the subtitles also needs to be checked, as sometimes sentences are unnecessarily divided into several lines and sometimes the opposite: the subtitle displayed is too long, which makes it difficult to read.
While listening to the film, the translator verified the automatically prepared subtitles and then translated them into Ukrainian using the CAT tool to support the translator’s work. This shortened the order time and reduced the cost. After the translation the files, also in .srt format, were passed to a native speaker for proofreading.
Our translator’s task was therefore much more complex than a simple translation: while watching the film, the translator had to verify the correctness of the generated subtitles from the technical side, make corrections, and then make the translation into Ukrainian.
During the course of the task, the customer sent additional files for translation and proofreading with general information about the training and a short film that served as an introduction to the training.
Thanks to the commitment of our project manager and access to new technologies, such as automatic subtitle generation software and CAT tools, the project was successfully completed despite its large volume and short deadline.
If you need the professional translation of videos or other instructional materials, then get in touch with us. Do not hesitate, contact us!
