I recently produced and edited a TV spot for the Special Olympics in Spanish. Although it brought up many challenges for me since I don’t speak Spanish I completed the project by hiring the right people. First, I had the script writer deliver a shortened script because it takes longer to say the same thing in Spanish as it would to say it in English. Then, I hired Betina Frisone to translate the script (spanishworks@gmail.com). Her contract included approving the final video. I found the voice over talent at A Foreign Language Service. Before we recorded the VO he listened to the English video to replicate the mood of the video and to mark words that needed special emphasis. We recorded both the long and short version of the script, He said the English first, then in Spanish so I knew where to drop it into the timeline. More than 50% of the lines came from the shortened script to fit in the 30 second commercial. In Premiere Pro the sequence was duplicated, I left the audio track in for the English VO so I could match it with the Spanish track then I deleted the English VO track. I remixed the music and ambient sounds so they would not be competing with the new VO and changed the text to Spanish. Betina approved the final version and I output the media for the client. It’s a slow process to complete a video production in Spanish but doable. Watch both English and Spanish versions here.