To ring in the new year, today we’ll write about one of trickier aspects of quoting video translation projects – how to get accurate word counts. Often, clients aren’t able to provide scripts for a quote. Likewise, a lot of content may not have a script available – think of documentaries, news reports, live webinars, or reality TV shows, which often require transcription as part of a multimedia translation project. For this reason, getting realistic word count estimates from just video files is crucial to localization.
This blog post will provide a step-by-step for estimating word counts from video files.
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It’s not unusual to receive just a published final product, usually a folder full of video files – and nothing else – for a multimedia translation services quote. In those cases, video translation services professionals need to do a little file wrangling and word count estimating.
Following is that process:
If you have one video, this is relatively easy – just open the video, and get the total number of minutes from the play bar at the bottom. However, most multimedia projects contain multiple video files – for example, a video-based e-Learning course can contain hundreds of separate files. Same for marketing campaigns or full runs of TV shows, though in this case it’s dozens of files. Either way, getting a count for all the videos together is key.
To do so on a PC, open a window and select all the videos in it – we’ve done this in the following screen shot:
The total running time of all selected videos will appear in the bottom of the window – it’s highlighted in yellow above. This process works for most video files as well, including .mp4 (as seen above), .mov, .wmv, and .flv. It will not work with .swf files. Unfortunately, there’s no similar tip for Mac OS – if we find one, we’ll post it to this blog.
To get an actual word count, you need to multiply the total running time by the number of words generally spoken in each minute of video footage. Words-per-minute depend on the kind of content you’re localizing. Corporate, instructional, and e-Learning videos generally contain 165 words per minute, so this is a good figure to use in general. If we multiply the total running time in step #1 above (8 minutes approximately) by the standard corporate video words-per-minute (165), we get a total of 1,320 words.
If you have a different kind of content, it’s generally good to adjust the words-per-minute numbers. Documentaries and feature films, for example, usually contain 150 words per minute – however, this can vary widely, depending on the actual program. Comedies, for example, have very high WPM rates (like 160 WPM), while action movies have generally low ones (like 100 WPM). Marketing video translation also provides a challenge – these videos can have very different WPM rates, depending on whether they’re hard sell videos, or more impressionistic spots. Some elements, like disclaimers for drug commercials, can be extremely fast.
The key is to keep in mind the particulars of your video content – and when in doubt, to estimate on the high side.
Most e-Learning, instructional, corporate and webinar video content also requires on-screen titles localization – in some cases, quite extensively. Some webinars, for example, contain almost as much on-screen text as voice-over. It’s good to remember that this content adds to the overall translation word count, so keep an eye out for it. Unfortunately, there’s no good way to get word counts for on-screen titles quickly – they still require a visual estimate.
It’s good to keep in mind that webinars usually have about 90% of the voice-over word count in titles, while instructional videos usually have about 70%. Most other kinds of videos have 10% of the VO word count or lower – though again, it’s imperative to get a visual estimate by watching the videos.
No matter what, it’s always a good idea to buffer the final word counts (either by using a high WPM rate, or just adding a few words to the estimate). Video translation service quotes are adjusted after transcription to reflect the exact word count for a project – usually this won’t be a significant pricing change from the original quote, but clients will always be happier if this number goes down, so it’s best to keep estimates on the high side. Likewise, it’s crucial to point out to clients that estimates are just that, and that they’re based on a series of assumptions – sometimes the client will amend them, for example by adjusting on-screen text word counts. The key is to communicate all of this clearly to the client for a successful multimedia translation services project.
Download “7 Myths of Audio & Video Translation,”