Video Localization: Using AI Translations for Customer Education

Customer education provides SaaS users with tutorials, guides, and courses that help them use software effectively in their workflow. Videos enhance this process by offering dynamic, visual learning experiences that are easy to understand and engaging.

Businesses that serve customers globally need to ensure their self-help resources are tailored to the preferences of their international users. This is crucial for enhanced engagement, perceived credibility, and, ultimately, knowledge retention.

Video translation takes a stride in that direction by enhancing the accessibility of customer education content. Traditionally, this used to be resource-intensive.

Various AI-powered tools have greatly streamlined the video translation process, even allowing SMBs to localize their support material without breaking the bank.

In this article, let’s understand AI video translation and look at the different ways SaaS businesses can localize their visual help content for their customers. 

What is AI video translation?

Video translation makes a video accessible in a different language. It involves translating spoken language, subtitles, and on-screen text, while also considering cultural preferences, idioms, and regional slang.

This localizes the explainer videos and makes them more impactful and engaging for the native speakers of the target language. Sytex, an infrastructure project management tool, for example, localizes their content through voiceovers for Spanish users:

Teams can look forward to advantages like enhanced knowledge retention and a higher product affinity.

AI video translation simply means using artificial intelligence tools or software to automate various action items within the whole workflow. 

For instance, a common method of translating customer education videos is subtitling. AI can translate whole subtitle files into different languages within seconds. (We dive deeper into various methods of AI video translation further in the article.)

Let’s begin by recognizing the benefits customer success teams can look forward to by incorporating AI into their video translation workflows.

Why use AI to translate videos

The primary goal of translating customer education videos is to enhance their efficacy for the target audience. AI-powered tools solve three challenges associated with reaching that goal:

1. Upholding content quality: AI video translation tools streamline the translation process by automating speech recognition, language translation, and subtitle synchronization. They reduce human error, ensure consistency across multiple languages, and provide quick turnaround times.
2. Keeping the process lean: Key tasks such as transcription, translation, and synchronization can be done consistently within minutes, saving hours or days for customer success teams. This enables businesses to quickly respond to customer requests for help content.
3. Maintaining relevance at scale: The speed of translating videos with AI allows teams to update content quickly and translate them into additional languages. This ensures the customer support videos remain relevant even as the product evolves.

It’s crucial to recognize that the AI video translation workflow is different for everyone. The nature of self-help content and the customer preferences determine the method of translation, and ultimately, the workflow.

Three AI video translation methods

There are three primary ways AI can localize the customer education video content by translating them into a different, regional language:

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Let’s dive deeper into them to learn about the nuances of each of these methods. This will help teams make the right choice.

1. Subtitling

This method translates the video's subtitles to a different language while retaining the original video. Leveraging AI-powered translation tools will make the dialect switch more accurate for subtitles as large language models (LLMs) can ‘understand’ the broader intent of sentences and paragraphs.

This feature can be easily spotted on different social media platforms such as YouTube that auto-translate subtitles in real-time. For instance, the subtitles in a Slack customer tutorial video can be translated into any language: 

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Subtitling retains the original audio of the content, making it ideal for visual-heavy customer education videos. Content related to feature demonstrations and quick step-by-step guides can still retain their effectiveness when the subtitles are translated into a different language.

Due to their efficacy and affordability, these can be quickly implemented by SaaS companies. 

However, it can be challenging for customers when most support resources are translated through this method. Viewers watching the video while reading the subtitles can be tiring. This can reduce their commitment to learning, and ultimately the product, particularly in the long term.

For instance, let’s say a SaaS business has a use case-specific product training course with hours of material. If they are translated with the subtitling method, this can demotivate the users from completing the course, or even going for a competitor.

2. Transcription

Transcripts provide a text version of the entire video content. These can be translated into the language of the customers to help them search through the learning material, take notes, and review them at their own pace.

Most of the free LLMs available on the market can do that. The above Slack customer education video’s script (auto-generated by YouTube) can be easily translated into German with Claude 3.5:

This method of AI video translation is ideal for in-depth training sessions, webinars, and detailed tutorials where comprehensive understanding is crucial. These videos often contain complex information, industry jargon, or explanations of concepts that benefit from a written reference.

Apart from being cost-effective, when automated with AI, transcriptions make customer education content more accessible to users with hearing impairments. Additionally, the extracted script can be used to create articles, which can boost the search engine visibility of the content.

At the same time, as one might expect, transcriptions can lose their effectiveness on hands-on training videos. Content that demonstrates procedures or features requires the learner to focus on the visuals. 

A simple workaround can be writing detailed how-to articles based on the transcript and inserting perfectly cut GIFs or annotated images.

3. Voiceover

Voiceovers replace the audio of the original video with a new recording in the target language. Typically, a single voice actor reads the entire translated script, which is then synchronized into the video.

Customer education content such as onboarding sessions use case-specific product tutorials, and personalized troubleshooting videos are translated best through voiceovers. This delivers nuanced information in an engaging way and guides customer action.

Users won’t have to focus on subtitles as the audio will be in their preferred language. Since their attention will be planted on the demonstration and explanation, they can learn to use the product to solve problems quickly.

Traditionally, giving a new voiceover to a video requires a lot of investment, which made this challenging. Businesses had to translate the script accurately, hire voice actors, and ensure the audio was synced properly with the video. This can take days or weeks.

Fortunately, AI video translation tools mitigate that. These platforms extract the script from the original audio, translate it into the target language, and give an AI voiceover with matching pace and cadence.

And all of that happens within minutes.

Personio, a SaaS company that builds HR management solutions, leverages AI to create videos in multiple European languages. For example, here's one of their videos with a German voiceover

But, which of the above three is ideal?

Choosing the best AI video translation method

Whether it is the easy implementation of subtitling or the immersive experience provided by AI voiceovers, each of the three translation methods comes with unique advantages.

What’s better for teams is that AI has made each of these methods fast and easy to use, while keeping them affordable. Large companies with diverse international customers can consider experimenting with all three methods before making a choice.

For businesses looking to deliver translated customer education videos immediately, they need to look at the differentiating factor. The differentiating factor is the learning experience of the customer with the translated educational content.

Subtitles, although easy to apply, require a customer to focus on the text on the screen along with the visual content, which can tire them out. 

Transcriptions, quite effective for in-depth learning, are often limited to detailed theoretical content presented in webinars and live sessions. Showing a particular product feature, for instance, through translated transcription can be counterproductive.

This leaves us with AI voiceovers. As they translate the audio narration, customers can solely focus on the instructions explained while following the visual demo. Moreover, they can be used for all kinds of customer educational videos, including webinars and live sessions.

The best part is teams can give AI voiceovers to their customer education videos to localize them in minutes with Clueso. Here is how it works: 

Try our AI video translation playground now. No login is required.

Wrapping up

Videos can help customers understand the features and functionalities of a SaaS product quickly to improve stickiness. Global brands can enhance the efficacy of these educational videos by translating them to their customer’s preferred language.

Leveraging AI to translate video content, whether by subtitling, transcribing, or voiceover, makes the whole process streamlined and cost-effective.

AI voiceovers can be ideal for most use cases as they deliver a more immersive learning experience compared to subtitles and transcriptions. Customers can fully focus on the video while listening to the narration in a dialect they are more comfortable with.

Clueso allows SaaS teams to translate their customer education videos, be it feature demos or step-by-step tutorials, in minutes. 

Ready to speak your customer’s language? 

Let’s talk.

FAQs

Can I use AI to translate videos?

Yes, AI video translation tools like Clueso can translate videos by giving them an AI voiceover, ensuring quick and accurate multilingual content for global audiences. Other methods include translating the subtitle and the transcript.

How do I change the language of a video using AI?

Upload the video to an AI video translation tool like Clueso, select the target language, and the AI will handle transcription, translation, and voiceover generation. The whole process takes minutes, speeding up the entire video localization process.

How to auto-translate a video?

Social media platforms like YouTube offer subtitle translation options to ensure wider accessibility for videos. Additionally, users can leverage AI-powered automation tools like Clueso to give a voiceover in a different language within minutes.

Is there an app to automatically translate video?

Yes, apps like Clueso translate videos into 20+ languages within minutes. All teams have to do is choose the target language based on their customers’ needs.

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