English may be the language of business but for Americans it’s not the only language spoken at home. The most recent US Census data revealed that Spanish is the second most common language, followed by Chinese, Tagalog and French.
Why should you care?
By simply adding a Spanish language audio track to your video you read another 12% of American according to the most recent US Survey data. Depending upon your product demographics, the incremental cost can be truly worthwhile.
It’s not longer difficult to manage multilingual video. In fact it’s relatively straight-forward to create your patient education or disease awareness message in a second, third or even fourth language. Here are some tips.
4 tips to make the multilingual process easier
- Work only with medical translators. These specialists while more difficult to find insure faster internal approval times and get your product out the door faster.
- Don’t forget your subtitles and closed captions. They appeal to low-hearing audiences as well as the elderly. Subtitles and closed captions also give a boost to your SEO.
- Use graphics more than people. As you branch out into different languages you can can avoid the question of “who do we show” (male? female? young? old? what race?) by using graphics, animations, and strong narration.
- Always bring your translators and in-house language experts into the creative mix early. They’ll alert you to possible localization problems early on, saving you time and money.
There’s never been a better time to create multilingual medical education and patient education video. The ROI is great. The cost is relatively low. As America goes multi-cultural, shouldn’t your communications go too?