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Translation of a timed video script
Thread poster: Ana P. Gutierrez
Ana P. Gutierrez
Ana P. Gutierrez  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:29
Member (2007)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Sep 23, 2009

I have a received a request to translate a video script (no video, only the script is provided) and given a length of time the spanish text cannot exceed once read by the voice over talent.

I've been given the text divided by shots, and a total time of 13 minutes which the translated text cannot exceed.

Perhaps its very obvious, but since this is the first time I've been requested to do this, I wanted to ask how to does one ensure that the translation will not exceed th... See more
I have a received a request to translate a video script (no video, only the script is provided) and given a length of time the spanish text cannot exceed once read by the voice over talent.

I've been given the text divided by shots, and a total time of 13 minutes which the translated text cannot exceed.

Perhaps its very obvious, but since this is the first time I've been requested to do this, I wanted to ask how to does one ensure that the translation will not exceed the length of time requested.

Should I proceed with my translation as usual and then read it back to check on the total timing and adjust it if needed?

I would appreciate your comments and corrections to my assumptions if necessary.

Cordially,

Ana ▲ Collapse
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 16:29
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Just thinking out loud... Sep 23, 2009

Ana Gutierrez wrote:
I wanted to ask how to does one ensure that the translation will not exceed the length of time requested.


I'm thinking out loud...

1. I think that one can assume that length of speech largely correlates to number of syllables. Let's assume also that a mid-sentence pause (eg. a comma) counts for four syllables and an end-of-sentence pause (eg. a fullstop) counts for seven syllables (erring on the side of caution here).

If you agree with this theory, then all it would take to compare the speech length of the source text with that of the translation is to paste them into very narrow columns and enable automatic hyphenation. Create a PDF, copy/paste from the PDF into a plain text editor, and do a bit of hacking. Then compare the number lines.

I tried the above and it works... a little.

2. Another option might be to write a script that feeds each portion of text (that you want to measure) one by one in a text-to-speech program and measures the amount of time it takes to reach each line. Run the script on a second computer, with the volume muted, while you do something useful on your primary computer. Do you think that this might be useful?

If you think so, I've written something that might interest you:
http://leuce.com/tempfile/omtautoit/speechLEN.zip



[Edited at 2009-09-23 12:01 GMT]
 


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Translation of a timed video script







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