Marketing Profs

Everyone thought I was nuts to take on the scriptwriting job doing sales-training videos for the European division of a major US car manufacturer.

"You write it in English so ze boys in Detroit can understand und approve it," said the German producer on the phone to me. "Zen I shoot the video and do one edit. Zat's all zey vant to spend."

"Fine," I ventured. "So what's the catch?"

"Zat one edit gets voiceovers in 11 different languages," he continued, sniggering a little. "Ze translations are all different lengths. So your original has to work in chunks mit long gaps in English, so it can flow at 90 miles an hour in Greek.

"It's a bloody nightmare," he said finally. "Still vant to do it?"

I let out a long sigh, stared at my sparse-looking bank statement and said yes.

Here, then, is some advice based on my painful experience.

Allow for different language lengths

Strictly speaking, this is more of a design issue. But as we saw, it can affect the words, too.

If you intend to use the same visual template for more than one language version, ensure that your design allows for differing amounts of text (or spoken speech.)