19 March 2022
Coping with Coronavirus.
In the grand scheme of things, subtitles on a video don’t seem that big of a deal. There are plenty of resources in the main global languages out there, right? Your preferred periodical will provide you with the basic information, of course. But what if the information you really needed, the real expert stuff, wasn’t in your language? Oh, you’ll just wait for it to come out in your language, of course, it’s not that important.
Well, to some people, especially in light of recent events, this can be absolutely vital information that is needed as soon as it comes to light. That’s where Alpha comes in.
We had been working with our client, a medical instrumentation developer and manufacturer based in China, for a while. Now, with the global COVID-19 pandemic looming over us, we were needed for some very tight turnaround work.
The client produced webinars and videos, presentations, and reports, all of which needed localizing into 7 key languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Arabic. We were also required for a remote interpretation service where necessary.
So, we got to work, with two of our very best PMs on the case. Due to the client’s time difference and schedule, our intrepid managers even had to stay well into the night, standing by for videos to be delivered so they could start the process immediately.
The subject matter dealt with a lot of frontline medical information, mostly in regards to the current medical emergency. Experts shared their experiences in a range of fields pertaining to their speciality. These topics included:
The videos generally consisted of two of these experts giving a presentation, followed by a live Q&A session. They aimed to provide their own expert consensus, analysis, findings and opinions on the topic, information many industry and medical personnel desperately needed. The client would then send Alpha the material and our own experts, linguists well-versed in medical terminology, would transcribe and subtitle it in their respective languages.
Of course, we also had our own adversity to overcome. With the pandemic in full swing, we were no longer able to work as usual in the office. Alpha staff stepped up, however. The head of our AV department, working on overlaying the video presentations with subtitles, set up all the equipment he needed in his own house, keeping the project rolling on nicely.
Naturally, we were very grateful for the continued, even heightened, income from this client, but this project was more than that. Not only were we winning more tasks from a prestigious client, we were also helping to communicate the knowledge and measures needed to protect against the COVID-19 virus to wider audiences. As the team’s office manager said: “We are doing meaningful things”.
In the end, the client was happy with our work: the PMs confirmed that “the client really appreciates our quick response and quality”. And we were pleased and honoured to be of help in a global crisis.
