Video Localization for the Chinese Market: A Comprehensive Guide

Recently updated on February 21st, 2024 at 08:36 pm

As predicted by the end of 2022, over 82% of internet traffic will go to video content. However, only a quarter of internet users speaks English. That’s a big discrepancy if your business uses video content as a part of your marketing strategy.

💡Whatever industry you are in, you need to speak the language of your audience if you want to connect well with them.

That’s why many big international companies in the world are focusing on video localization for the Chinese market. Fortunately, the Chinese video subtitle translation service is much more accessible and wallet-friendly than it has ever been before.

What’s Video Localization?

The process of video localization for the Chinese market usually involves:

• Providing subtitles or captions in the local language
• Providing dubbing or voice-overs in the local language
• Using local equivalents of idioms, humour, colloquialisms, and other elements
• Changing currency, and measurement units to meet local norms
• Adapting images, icons, emojis, etc. to meet local norms
• Adapting colours to follow local colour symbolism norms

💡An effective strategy of video localization for the Chinese market considers every element of the video. What’s being seen on the screen and what’s being heard. Even the most subtle cultural element is thoroughly addressed.

Why Do You Need to Localize Your Video Content?

There’s a variety of benefits to carry out video localization for the Chinese market.

# Video is the most powerful marketing tool

Chinese subtitle translation is critical for all international brands with its growing prevalence. It’s seen as the leading marketing tool with the best conversion rate, the ideal channel for consumers to discover goods or services.

# Localized video content is more effective

Though video content has long been proven to be the most effective marketing channel, the effectiveness drops radically if the language in the video is a language your target audience doesn’t understand.

💡The best way to increase the conversion rate of your video content is to localize it with the language your target audience speaks and adapt every aspect to meet the preference of your audience.

What Are Different Types of Video Localization for the Chinese Market?

There’re many ways to localize the audio parts of the video content for the Chinese market.

Here are several common types of video localization for the Chinese market.

# Subtitles

Adding subtitles to the video content has numerous benefits:

SEO – allowing search engines to index your content for more traffic.
Information retention – seeing the information in written form can reinforce the memory and cause your audience to retain it for a longer time.
Watch time on videos – subtitles in the local language help increase significantly the amount of time a viewer will watch a video for.

# Captions

Different from subtitles that record the spoken parts of a video, captions usually include the recording of all sound present, including music, song lyrics, sound effects, background noises, coughs, sneezes, and more. Captions are great for all audiences, especially the deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.

# Voice Over

If you’ve ever watched a piece of TV news with someone speaking in a foreign language and an interpreter by the side providing translations at a slightly louder volume, then that’s what voice-over is.

# Dubbing

Dubbing usually replaces the original audio track with a new one in the local language that matches the performance of the original one. Dubbing is more complex and expensive than voice-over as it requires a whole new cast of vocal talent as well as the artful creation of a script that matches words in two different languages with one set of lip movements.

Video Localization for the Chinese Market: 4 Challenges

Market Research

In-depth knowledge of your target market is essential in any localization project. You must know your target audience, what language and dialects they speak, what are the social and cultural taboos, what are your sales and marketing strategies, etc. That’s why many international businesses choose specialist language service providers like Chinese Copywriter to carry out video localization for the Chinese market.

A Holistic Approach

If you want your video content to connect well with your target audience, every aspect of your video should be localized. It’s not just the words spoken in the audio tracks. You need to go further by localizing other aspects of your video, for instance, colours, images, emoji, currency, measurement units, etc.

Budget

Your budget plays a big role in how well you can achieve your video localization for the Chinese market campaign. The best solution is to check with your language service provider and ask for advice as to the best approach with your budget in mind.

Text Expansion

When Latin texts are translated into Chinese characters, it’s common for a given phrase to take up less or more space than before. This can be a serious problem when text-only has a certain amount of screen time before it disappears. Therefore, it requires careful adjustment either involves changing the speed of the scenes in the video track or calls for some additional expertise on the part of your LSP.

Frequently Asked Questions