VerbalizeIt is an incredibly flexible platform that makes it easy to translate across multiple mediums of communication and file formats. However, our ability to provide you with the highest quality and timely translations is dependent on receiving content in a format that our platform can “understand” .
This tutorial covers the following four most common questions users encounter while preparing and uploading content for translation on VerbalizeIt:
I’m getting an error about an unsupported format
My files contain content that shouldn’t be translated
I’m seeing an error, or the word count for my content seems too low/ incorrect
- Microsoft Word (.docx only, not .doc)
If your file is in .doc format, please convert it to .docx format before uploading - Microsoft Excel (.xlsx only, not .xls)
If your file is in .xls format, please convert it to .xlsx format before uploading - Plain text (.txt)
- PO, Strings files
- Standardized XML-based formats: Resx, XLF, XLIFF, YML and YML
AUDIO:
- MP3 or WAV
- A link to where an MP4 file is hosted publicly (not needing login/ authorization for access) – for example, a link to an mp4 hosted on Dropbox
VIDEO:
- A link to where an MP4 file is hosted publically (not needing login/ authorization for access) – for example, a link to an mp4 hosted on Dropbox
- Link to a Vimeo video
Reformatting your content for translation: The VerbalizeIt platform uses specific rules to understand what content should be translated, what should be left in the native language, and what should be treated as instructions.
Content Needing Translation : Any content that is uploaded in “Step 1” is treated as content needing translation, and included in your word count.
Frequently, Microsoft Excel files will contain row and column names, as well as special instructions. These need to be removed from the file you upload if they are only for context. This should be treated as described below.
In addition, text-based files will frequently contain special instructions/ phrases which are required to stay in the source language. These should be enclosed in ^^double carets^^, as shown below :
Dealing with word counts that seem incorrect: This may happen for one of several reasons:
1. Your content contains a lot of images, scans or other items from which text cannot be extracted: Here is an example of a document that VerbalizeIt would not recognize as text:
This happens frequently for MS Word and PDF files, where text is embedded into an image(s). To fix this, please consider one of the following steps:
- Run any scanned content through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) in order to extract text from images and scans
- Transcribe any content contained in images, and upload a “clean” version of the document
2. Your PDF files are “locked”: Frequently, authors will lock PDFs in order to prevent extraction of content from PDFs. This can be addressed in a few ways:
- Unlock the PDF by entering the password associated with the document
- If the password is not available, transcribe the content into a file from which it can be extracted
3. Your content is hosted in a location we cannot reach: This will happen often with hosted audio/ video files. Ensure that content isn’t hosted behind a firewall, and that it doesn’t require user authentication for us to access it.
