LOCALIZING “THE LIFE OF TINA” TO ES-MX

Flat Image Localization, Dubbing & Subtitling

Flat image localization, dubbing and subtitling are an essential part of bringing movies, shows and videos to audiences around the world. I personally do not love dubbed movies, however, subtitles have become a go-to for watching movies, shows or series on Netflix that I would otherwise never watch, like for example, “Love is blind Sweden”.

“The life of Tina” (“A vida da Tina”, in Portuguese) is a YouTube comedy produced and written by Brazilian artists Isabela Mariotto and Julia Burnier. One of them plays Tina and the second is the voice of Tina. The videos reflect the ironic lifestyle of Tina, however the most fascinating part of this show to me is how they use dubbing to give the character another layer of complexity and entertainment. In this project I worked with two different videos: Video 1- “The life of Tina” show (a snippet of what the show is); and Video 2- an interview of the two creators of the show.

Now you might be thinking why did I pick a video in Portuguese? Well, I live in Brazil from 2008 to 2012 and one of the ways that I try to keep my Portuguese alive is by watching/listening/reading in as much content in Portuguese as I can. “A vida da Tina” was one of those videos that I found while searching on the web. Now let’s go dive into this localization project.

Localization details: For Video 1, I performed flat image localization and subtitling from pt-BR to es-MX; and for Video 2, I performed flat image localization and added subtitles from pt-BR to es-MX of “A vida da Tina” into Spanish. Additionally, I also localized the script to make it appropriate for all audiences and edited both videos to reduce the length.

Source videos

Asset Prep

To localize the assets, I performed the following:

1. For all workflows: Download the videos using free online resource to download YouTube videos.
2. For Dubbing: Separate the A&E track from the source dialog using AI with the online free tool Vocal Remover.

Flat Image Localization

The interview video had burned subtitles in Portuguese, so aside from localizing the images that had Portuguese text I also removed all of the burned subtitles using the content aware fill feature in After Effects.

For both videos I also performed flat image localization using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects using the steps in the infographic below. This process took me a few hours. Even though the final deliverables are shorter than the source videos, I did process both videos in their entirety. This took me 3-4 hours or even more because I had some issue with After Effects crashing so always make sure you are saving your projects so that you don’t have to start localizing your images a second time around!

Flat Image Localization Workflow

Below is a sped-up video of the flat image localization process with After Effects and Adobe Premiere:

To recreate all the text in both videos, I used Myfont.com to find a similar font. I then treated the text with a similar color and stroke and effect where needed.

Dubbing & Subtitling Workflows

Localizing Audio (Dubbing)

To dub the video I used Adobe Audition for Video 1, first created an M&E track using AI with Vocal Remover. By looking at the source audio wavelength, and after practicing with the source audio, you can record your audio to match the correct location of the track. Once you record the audio you export the track and import it back into Premiere.

The most complex part of this process is mimicking the tone and register of the source audio. It is truly a great craft. I hope that my deliverable makes you laugh. The final dubbed video is only 30 seconds long, however the time I invested in preparing it was several hours. If this had been an actual client request I would hire voice talent, and a desktop publishing (DTP) and Audio Visual team. Below you can find a screenshot of my work while recording in audition and the Dubbing Workflow that I followed.

Dubbing Workflow

To add new subtitles in Spanish, I first created a transcription in Adobe Premiere Pro which I then exported as an SRT file. I then translated the file in Phrase with Machine Translation and performed MTPE (Machine Translation Post-Editing). Once the translation was finalized I downloaded the file and did QA using VisualSubSync Enhanced following the Netflix Timed Text Style Guide. The process of generation the captions and translating the script takes less than 1 hour. The most time-consuming part is QA (1-2 hours for 5 minutes of video), which should be detailed enough to ensure a seamless experience. No one wants to watch a poorly subtitled movie/show.

Subtitling Workflow

The video below shows the asset after adding Spanish subtitles.

There are several free tools that can be used for subtitling. However, you should make sure that your tool will allow you to easily QA your subtitles and to include QA check so that you can create subtitles compliant with your specific needs. In this project, I used VisualSubSync for QA purposes. However, one drawback is that if you need to create a new subtitle you cannot do this. A workaround, which is time consuming, is to move the content and to the next subtitle and edit the content as needed. This is one of the main reasons why I really like Premiere Pro. In Premiere, you can add a new subtitle or duplicate your subtitles and delete and a new content. You can also place the subtitles in different places, change the color of the font and also add a background to improve readability. I do not recommend doing QA in Premiere pro, however if your project is only a minute or two, this might be the fastest route, instead of exporting your SRT, QAing and the importing back.

Final Deliverables Localized into Spanish for Mexico (es-MX)

Challenges

The video frames did not always match the audio which made it difficult to QA the subtitles. In these cases you have to decide what is more important: following the Timed Text Guidelines or so that the audience can understand the content?

Conclusion

I had originally proposed to also localize all my content to en-US but, after spending more than 6 hours on the first sit down, I realized that I would be spending more time then required for this project. Another reason that made me modify my original proposal was because of technical issues I had with Premiere and AE. AE kept crashing. Unfortunately, this happened right after I had finished localizing more than 20 clips for the interview video (which had burned captions). So, after redoing all my images and spending several hours on this, I decided to modify my proposal and only localize to Spanish. Also because of these issues, I decided to edit and work with a shorter version for the localize deliverables to ensure that I did not spend more time then necessary on this project.

To avoid having to modify the scope of an AV project, I recommend using a computer/laptop that has more RAM, particularly if you will be specializing in AV localization or DTP. In the case of localizing to other languages, in the future I will for sure leverage scripts to save time in importing and exporting.

Although dubbing, subtitling, and flat image localization processes are straightforward and simple, when it comes to longer assets with lots of audio content as well as images, the time that it can take to localize such assets can easily turn into hours. Here are my recommendations for creating high-quality localized products:

1. Follow industry guidelines, such as the Netflix Timed Text Style Guide
2. Automate your processes
3. Use scripts wherever possible
4. Work with subject matter experts, such as professional linguists, videographers, DTP professionals
5. Create clear and easy to follow workflows
6. Have your new people provide feedback on your workflows
7. Constantly improve your workflows
8. Use the proper equipment and software
9. Enjoy working with happy stakeholders and clients!

Software Used & Online Resources Used

Here is a list of the software and resources used to localize the two videos above:

• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Adobe After Effects
• Adobe Audition
• Phrase
• VisualSubSync Enhanced
• Myfonts.com

I hope you find this information useful. Thanks for reading!

Copyright Disclaimer: under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. This project is a proof-of-concept, and as such does not represent nor infringe on the creator(s) in any way.