First Draft
Case study

Challenge

• First Draft designed “Covering coronavirus: An online course for journalists” and translated a series of Essential Guides to tackle the challenge posed by the rapid spread of the coronavirus ‘infodemic’. The rapid spread of misleading or incorrect information about the disease, how it spreads, and how we can protect ourselves against it required a rapid reaction.
• The course and guides localisation needed to be completed in 1/3 of the regular timing. Information on the pandemic is produced every second and rapid access to the course and guides in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German and Hindi to reach as many professionals as possible, in the shortest possible time, was paramount.
• The translation of journalistic language and a newly created English jargon around the pandemic, without equivalents in many languages, made consistent and accurate use of terminology key.
• The complexity of the course and guides required Global Lingo to offer support end-to-end, from
  source content and video animation edition before translation, to glossary creation, translation, transcription, subtitling and burning, video editing, First Draft native speakers review management, course reintegration, rebuild in LMS, DTP and Linguistic Sign Off.
• Content in .doc, .mov, Final Cut Pro, PowerPoint and InDesign resulted in 70,000 words for translation and 1.5 hours of video for subtitling and editing.

Approach / Solution

• Key milestones, approach, responsibilities and deadlines were agreed prior to project kick-off and documented in a timing plan.
• Several steps were taken from the outset to reduce First Draft native speakers’ feedback upon translation completion:
  • Glossary created and reviewed by First Draft native speakers to capture key terminology
  • The correct style and tone of voice was briefed as per English copywriter brief
  • A sample of content was translated and reviewed by First Draft native speakers before translation
• A specialist team of dedicated linguists worked on the project to reduce the time needed, while a single proofreader provided consistency and accuracy.
• The dedicated Project and Account Management team at Global Lingo and First Draft built a
  collaborative relationship, with regular meetings held weekly.
• With languages added along the way (Hindi and German), the content was completed on a
  rolling basis, to allow reviewers, video editors, and typesetters to work while other content was still
  being translated.
• First Draft’s native team was trained on LiveReview, Global Lingo’s online review tool, and reviewed
  all translated content before video editing, typesetting, and formatting content.
• The course reintegration was followed by a Linguistic sign-off stage, where one of the dedicated
  linguists undertook a final review of all content in context to make sure everything had been
  formatted correctly, nothing was cut-off, missing or incorrect.
• Finally, the course was rebuilt on a rolling-basis on First Draft’s Learning Management System (LMS).
• The creation of a translation memory along the process helped with timelines, consistency, and
  costs, and will aid with future translations.

Benefit

• First Draft received finalised courses ready to be published on their Learning Management System, with no further action required.
• The first two languages were ready to be launched within 25 working days, with all remaining languages completed for publishing in 1/3 of the regular timing, helping First Draft on their mission to support journalists to deliver faithful and accurate information about the pandemic in 6 languages.
• 3 hard drives with the project assets were shared with First Draft for backup storage security purposes. These include source and target assets organised by project – course and essential guides -, language and category type, i.e. .doc files, .mov files, Graphics, Images, PPTS, SRTs, Thumbnails and the final approved glossary.
• A final project recap meeting to discuss collaboration improvements and action points is an example of the partnership that Global Lingo and First Draft built during the fast-paced execution of a successful project.