José Henrique Lamensdorf - translation - tradução

My goal is to add value while translating, to make it really worthwhile for all parties involved. This requires ethics and professionalism, two things I will not compromise on.

In order to add value, the best way is to discover what represents added value to the client. For this, I ask two questions, unless they have already been answered in the first contact:
1. What do you have?
2. What do you want or need?

My mission will be to take the client from answer (1) as close to answer (2) as it is economically feasible for me to do. If it's not cost-effective to have me take it as far as answer (2), I can refer to someone who will undertake the last part of the job, and step out. Otherwise I might outsource such work, or let the client do it on their own. My services begin and end where they are economically viable, at the client's discretion.

CASE STUDY

It is difficult to explain the concept of added value, since it is something that will be different in each case. Hence I'll describe an actual project to illustrate.

The setting was geographically complex. The client was a company on the US West Coast. They hired a translation agency in Midwest Brazil to translate a video from English into Spanish, to be used in a product launch in yet another country in Latin America.

The initial task assigned to me looked simple: given a video in English and its translation into Spanish, I was expected to subtitle it.

I received a 320x230 pixels WMV file. It didn't look too good for subtitling. As I didn't know then, I asked what they intended to do with that video. It seemed that they were about to put it on a web site.

I was told they would use it for a product launch presentation in a Spanish-speaking country. The video seemed to be a series of well-crafted 3D graphic animations, assembled onto a PowerPoint presentation. I checked their quality, and it was good enough for full-screen. So I suggested enlarging it, and they liked the idea.

A remaining issue was the presentation itself. How would it be possible to ensure that the computer to be used there would have the required software and codecs? The risk of a fiasco was considerable, and the deadline was close enough to demand assured compatibility on the first attempt.

In spite of the myriad digital video formats and codecs available, the currently universal media is the DVD, exception made to region codes, which I had no intention of using. I suggested that the presentation were built as a DVD. The client liked the idea, and approved it. On top of that, they decided to order 150 copies of that DVD to give away to the guests at this launch, amidst other promotional material to be distributed.

The video had a superb musical soundtrack, but nothing else on audio. All information was in subtitle-like text onscreen, using white letters with black outline, the standard in North America.

My subtitles follow the Brazilian standard, i.e. yellow letters with black outline. Some screens were crammed with text. If I overlaid my yellow subs on the existing white ones, both with black shadows, the final effect would look like overdone scrambled eggs!

If I had the original PowerPoint presentation, I could replace the original text with the translation, but there was no time to ask about it. So my solution was to dub it, with a native Spanish-speaking narrator. I mixed his speech with the music, and got the final soundtrack.

However they still needed the 150 copies, and time was running out. They had planned that a staff member in North America would make these copies using one of the computers in their offices. I calculated that it would take him 5 days, working 8 hours per day. I discussed with a local client of mine, a video producing studio, and in less than two hours I had the 150 DVDs all ready, color-labeled, at a very affordable cost.

I checked with the client, and yes, they would have adequate packaging material at the launch venue. It would be useless to overload the courier with DVD boxes. So I sent only the disks on a pin; they would arrive in time for individual packaging.


This case illustrates what I understand as "adding value". The client initially wanted me to "subtitle a video", and would have a lot of trouble to make their presentation and distribute copies to the guests. It's certain that everything would not be ready in time. I added value in a way that they would have the video ready for the presentation and the DVDs for distribution to participants. The total cost was probably less than what they would have spent doing it on their own (and missing the deadline).