Heng Wu
Expertise: Localization Management | Translation |
DTP | QA | Dubbing
Education: M.A. in Translation and Localization
Management, Graduated from Middlebury
Institute of International Studies at Monterey
Project: Localization of Tiffany engagement ring commercial into simplified Chinese
Project Domo
The source video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIFE0cX48Ic
The Localized video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIQZuSCJvfA
Introduction
This project was to localize a commercial of Tiffany engagement ring into simplified Chinese. The duration of this commercial lasts for 1 minute 5 seconds.
Tiffany & Company (known colloquially as Tiffany or Tiffany’s) is an American worldwide luxury jewelry and specialty retailer, headquartered in New York City.
Tools Used
- Abode Audition
- Abode Photoshop
- Memsource
Workflow
- File prep to translation
- Translation and transcreation using Memsource
- Dubbing using Abode Audition
- Editing
- Music Mixdown
- QA
Although the workflow may look simple and straightforward, the work needed to fulfil each step was actually tedious. The most challenging parts were:
1. Translation: Translating the source in a way that would resonate with the Chinese audience. I was very careful with choices of words in order to make sure the source sounds as natural and meaningful as possible. Here are the source and the target:
| Source | Target |
| Love is patient. | 爱是恒久忍耐 |
| Love is kind. | 爱是仁慈 |
| It doesn’t envy. | 爱不嫉妒 |
| It doesn’t boast. | 不夸耀 |
| It is not proud. | 不张扬 |
| It does not dishonor others. | 不伤害 |
| It is not self-seeking. | 爱不是自私 |
| It is not easily angered. | 爱是平和 |
| It keeps no records of wrongs. | 爱，不计较对错 |
| Love does not delight in evil, | 不惧怕黑暗 |
| But rejoices with the truth. | 它向往真实 |
| It always protects, | 爱是保护 |
| Always trusts, | 是信任 |
| Always hopes, | 是憧憬 |
| Always preserves. | 是坚持。 |
| Introducing Tiffany Mark, | Tiffany Mark, |
| The first engagement ring for men. | 首款男士婚戒，为您呈现。 |
2. Music matching: Since I didn’t have the copyright of the original music, I had to find a similar-feeling music that matches the video. Luckily, I achieved this goal.
3. Dubbing: I have been working as a voice-over talent for many years, but I still found it hard to express the feelings in the localized video that the source intended to express. As a result, I recorded several samples and compared them with the source carefully. At the same time, my producer gave me valuable advises for perfection.
Best Practices
- Music Mix-down: When mixing the music and the video, Adobe Photoshop is much faster than Abode After Effects, the most common video processing software that people use. The latter one may take hours to render videos when it comes to larger projects.
- Video Reference: Adobe Audition CC 2015 has the great feature that allows user to import the source video as reference. It is extremely beneficial when localizing videos, because we can always play the sound tracks and the source video together simultaneously in order to sync with the source audio.
