How to translate a technical video with the terms your field uses
Tell Vizard Agent the target language and who will watch, and name the field. It rewrites the narration in the terms that discipline uses rather than the nearest everyday words, shortens the script to fit the original timing, and transcribes the new voice to check that the technical words were pronounced correctly.
What do you type into Vizard Agent?
Say who the viewers are and what they study or do. "Translate to Bosnian" gets you a correct, general translation. "For civil engineering students" tells Vizard Agent that a beam is not just a beam and that a failure mode has a name the students will be examined on.
Please translate the voice and the text in this video into Bosnian. It's important that the translation uses professional structural engineering vocabulary. The viewers are civil engineering students. Keep the background music if you can.
What does Vizard Agent actually do?
It treats the terminology as the hard part and the timing as the second one. A translated script is rarely the same length as the original, and the cheap fix of speeding the voice up makes a lecture harder to follow, which defeats the purpose. In the session behind this article it:
- Rewrote the first translation using reinforced concrete terms, such as over- and under-reinforced sections, yield strength, the compression zone and ductile versus brittle failure.
- Found the dub ran fifteen seconds long, and condensed the wording instead of speeding up the voice.
- Transcribed each new narration back to text and listened for how the technical terms were said.
- Rejected a voice that mispronounced the terms, and tested a short line in the closest standard voice before rendering the rest.
- Covered the old English captions with new ones timed to the new voice, and kept the original music quietly underneath.
When does this not work well?
When the field has competing national terms, or the course uses its own. Vizard Agent will pick the standard term, but if your lecturer says something different, send a short glossary. A language with few good synthetic voices is the other limit, so the narration may come in a close neighbouring accent.
Common questions
Why does my translation sound wrong to experts? It used everyday words. Name the field and Vizard Agent uses its terms.
Will it speed up the voice to fit? It shortens the wording instead. Vizard Agent keeps the pace natural.
Can I give it a glossary? Yes. Vizard Agent follows the terms you list over its own choices.