Alpha CRC localizes videos for the Swedish education market

Alpha CRC sits on GMS panel at LISA Forum

 

Alpha CRC localizes videos for the Swedish education market

Cambridge - August 2007 - Leading Cambridge localization company Alpha CRC Ltd was commissioned in July by Espresso, the UK's leading educational broadband content company, to translate over 420 videos into Swedish within just 10 weeks.

The principle behind Espresso's service is simple, but effective. The company creates short videos of news footage garnered from ITN but then individually voiced and reworked. The videos are aimed at primary school children aged between four and eleven, and are uploaded to a server supplied by Espresso and located at the school. This enables fast download, making it easy for the content to be accessed in the classroom or by pupils on an individual basis. The service is currently available in around 50% of the UK's primary schools. Espresso's aim with this project was to expand the service into Sweden.

As New Business Manager Darren Hughes explains, Alpha's involvement stemmed from an initial meeting with Espresso's Editorial Director and MD at the BETT Show. 'We first met David Summers and Lewis Bronze at BETT,' comments Darren. 'About a month later, David visited us to talk about the project in more detail. It quickly emerged that our experience in localization, engineering and multimedia was of great interest to Espresso in their attempt to localize their videos for the Swedish market.'

The project was planned along a very tight timeline, yet required great attention to detail and the highest levels of quality, especially as the Espresso Service is targeted at two very demanding and critical audiences: teachers and schoolchildren. As Alpha Project Manager Mette Clark observes, the project threw up a number of issues, both technically and operationally. 'As with any project of this nature, we faced a number of challenges,' comments Mette. 'On the technical side we were using videos which dated back as far as 2000. Many were flat tracks and we therefore did not have access to their individual assets. In most cases, as well as transcribing the scripts and translating them, we had to strip out the soundtracks, compose new music and record new voiceovers. In order to preserve the integrity of Espresso's original video, we decided early on that we needed to avoid lip synching, and opted for voiceovers, which in itself is not straightforward when the target language differs in length to the source language.'

Aside from these technical issues, the project presented a number of operational challenges and tested Alpha's in-house team to the full. 'In all, we reworked 428 videos with 317 being completed in five and a half weeks. This meant 70 videos being added to the project each week and running concurrently,' comments Mette. 'Each batch of 70 took the team three and a half weeks to complete. To ensure quality we decided to use our own in-house Swedish translators, with Swedish people clientside reviewing the translated text. This small team of translators guaranteed the consistency of translated text and enabled us to keep on top of the schedule.'

For New Business Development Manager Darren Hughes, the project underlined Alpha's key strengths. 'The Espresso project was great for us for a number of reasons,' says Darren. 'Above all, it allowed us to demonstrate our ability to work together as an effective in-house team utilizing our strength of having translators, engineers, quality assurance experts, post-production specialists and project managers all under one roof. The project was executed to the detailed project plan under great time pressure, and allowed us to develop an excellent relationship with the client. And it is this team effort which has led to our second order for 500 additional videos from Espresso.'

 

Alpha CRC sits on GMS panel at LISA Forum

Cambridge - August 2007 - Leading Cambridge localization company Alpha CRC Ltd received further recognition from the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) in October, when International Sales Director Paul Mangell was invited to sit on its GMS panel at the LISA Forum in Berlin.

Alpha appeared alongside representatives from Idiom, SDL and The Big Word in a session discussing the relative differences between Content Management Systems and Globalization Management Systems within the localization industry. Alpha's invitation to sit on the panel came on the back of five years' intense experience of Idiom World Server during which the company's 170 in-house translators and 15 Project Managers have processed in excess of 40 million words.

As Paul Mangell explains, the session enabled Alpha CRC to share its experiences and feed back independently on the industry's two leading systems, Idiom World Server and Teamworks. 'The main focus was on presenting how Globalization Management Systems and translation automation technologies and processes are currently being used, with the emphasis on customer applications, workflow and organizational requirements,' he comments. 'We therefore outlined our experience of using GMS/CMS technologies by discussing how the translation/localization process works by plugging into our clients' own systems to provide them with language and project management services. Our remit was also to ensure that participants received an independent and objective insight into the two leading GMS technologies. Our presence indicates the high esteem in which Alpha is held within the industry, and the authority with which we can comment on its development.'

In addition to LISA's Berlin Workshop, Paul Mangell is also representing Alpha at the Idiom World Summit and the Regional Conference in Barcelona, where he will be discussing “Continuous Workflow within GMS”. 'The localization industry is entering an exciting phase, especially in the sphere of removing the time lag between development and localization. And, increasingly, Alpha is being invited to contribute to the debate as an independent arbiter known for our experience, expertise and objectivity,' he concludes.