In mid July we will make an announcement but we are working very hard right now to localize a bunch of Best Motoring titles.  Producing a video segment from scratch is pretty intense but localizing something from Japanese to another language is almost just as labor intensive.  Obviously the editing of on screen text and subtitles are not easy.  I really shouldn't be even writing this blog because I have to proof read a million lines but I needed to take a break for a second.  

The Best Motoring Japanese versions are not scripted (except for the narration) so there is no writtne script we can get in a Word Document and just give it to someone to translate.  ALL of the comments from the cast and each of the on screen text needs to be picked up first.  You don't need to be a translator to do this.  You just need a good ear and know how to record to Word what you hear.  

The second step is the translation part.  There are two things that you need to know to do this.  1. Knowledge in technical automotive terms and 2. Creative mind and writing skills.  Knowledge in auto terms is pretty self explanatory.  If you are translating something as technical as Best Motoring you need to know the stuff.   An example of creative writing is when Tsuchiya Keiichi says in Japanese how the engine revs ups like "paaan, paaan".  In Japanese these sound imitation type words are called GIONs.  I looked up gion in Google translate and "Onomatopoeic" popped up...  We use a lot of these in Japan.  Kira kira is something shiny, tsuru tsuru is something slipery, sube sube is something smooth and so forth.  Another hurdle for someone trying to learn the language.  So you need to come up with a creative way in English to communicate that engine feeling to the viewers.  

After everything is translated, the subtitles need to be matched up to the video as when they appear for how many second/frames.  Another challenge because some sentences need to be longer or shorter when translated.  But they need to appear on screen long enough to read.   To shorten a comment without loosing the essense.  This matching process we do in the editing stage after the video has been cut and the time frames are fixed.  At the same time if you have a incar shot like the above where you have a footcam, a tachometer cam and text displaying the driver's name and car, you have no space to display 50 words!  Editorial skills needed again here.  We also make sure to proof read everything 4 times and make sure everything is consistent.  If we displayed the text "tread" to show the specs of one car we can't call it "track" when it appears again for another car.  That kind of stuff.  I don't even want to get into the conversion of km to mile and kg to lbs.  

So it's pretty labor intense stuff, there is no translation software that you feed and presto everything comes out perfect and ready to go.  Anyway I better get back to work...