Rapid technological change and globalisation put pressure on businesses to increase their use of film aimed at foreign viewers to advertise, communicate information or train staff.

Business films - the most frequent form of audiovisual translation professional translators are likely to encounter - represent a combination of translation and project management problems which requires specific strategies.

The aim of this one-day workshop is to show how to optimise quality and cost when translating such material. The following will be addressed, using authentic examples:

• audiovisual aspects (e.g. synchronisation, intonation, pronunciation of names, meaningful accents, text to appear on screen);  
• problems affected by the audiovisual context (e.g. cultural references, wordplay);
• meeting the requirements of the client, the viewers, and the audiovisual team (film director, recording artist, sound engineer, video editor, graphic designer);  
• optimising the work flow and providing a quote.  

  The ground will be covered in four stages:

• characteristics of business film material projects;
• assessment and preparation of the project (for quote, project management and translation);  
• providing a quote;
• translation problems and strategies. 

NB: Although very brief references will occasionally be made to subtitling, this is NOT a subtitling workshop.

To read an article on the translation of business film material which I published in the ITI Bulletin (May-June 2015), click here.

For general workshop features, click here. For the list of clients I have had the opportunity of working for, see below.

• Professional translators

- “Exceptionally enlightening, engaging and entertaining” Institute of Translation & Interpreting Bulletin (Jan-Feb 2012).
- A masterclass packed with information and food for thought.

- A very thorough and fascinating overview of a challenging area of translation.
- Very comprehensive. Full of great information, knowledge, experience and ideas. Perfect for a day’s workshop.
- (...) interesting from start to finish.
- Well prepared, excellent time keeping, friendly atmosphere (...). I am impressed.
- Plenty of good, practical advice to take away.
- Very inspiring.

- Lots of extra materials.
- (...) truly excellent: sensitive to all the related problems and very clear on the strategies for solutions.

- It has opened my eyes to a new field and I feel quite prepared thanks to all the tips.
- Certainly useful for work and for CV.

• Language consultant

- Well presented, clear, comprehensive, practical, interesting, good mix of media (...). Excellent mix of languages referenced as examples.

• Postgraduate students

- (...) inspiring workshop (...) extremely useful from a professional point of view. The delivery was absolutely outstanding.
- Highly informative speaker, well informed & engaging. Well-structured format. Practical and useful information that can be genuinely useful for our studies and future work.
- Amazing presentation.
- Very informative and accessible to those with little/no professional translation experience.
- Very logical. Inspirational.
- Great insight into a market I knew little about beforehand.
- Perfect timing (mixture of lecture and practical exercise).
- I very much liked the hands-on, practical approach.

• Undergraduate students

- Very good presentation of the materials (in terms of delivery, humour, conveying main points etc.); very accessible (...) very engaging and entertaining overall.
- [Spanish Erasmus student] An interactive presentation; clear explanations; good examples; really useful for students: it covers a lot of aspects that are interesting for them; (...) the speaker is an outstanding communicator.