October 9, 2023

How To Create Multilingual Content

An estimated 1.4 million Spanish speakers are in the United States construction workforce.

This represents approximately 10 percent of the total construction workforce in the country – and in some parts of the United States, the vast majority of front-line workers may be Spanish speaking.

Critical safety procedures, training, job site announcements, and huddles are often communicated only in English. When this happens, Spanish speakers do not receive the information they need to do their best work safely. In fact, Spanish-speaking construction workers are injured on the job at a rate that is 35 percent higher than the rate for all other construction workers. Language barriers can also lead to communication problems on the job site, resulting in lower-quality work.

Fortunately, there are steps that construction companies can take to improve communication with their Spanish-speaking employees. One way to do this is to ensure that all safety materials are translated into Spanish. Additionally, construction companies can provide bilingual supervisors who can help facilitate communication between workers who speak different languages. By taking these steps, construction companies can create a more inclusive work environment and improve safety for all employees.

But what if you are a company that doesn't have a bilingual resource on staff? Or, what if your bilingual staff member is stretched thin and doesn't have time to translate your every communication?

There's some awesome new technology available that you can use to quickly create video messages in both English and Spanish, distribute those messages to your workforce, and track if they've viewed them or not.

Okay, let’s say you want to create a video message in both Spanish and English. 

Here’s how to do so quickly and cost-effectively. 

First, here are the ingredients you’ll need:
  • A Smartphone (android or iOS)
  • A subscription to Rev.com  - an automated transcription service. $.25 per minute.
  • The Rev mobile app downloaded on your smartphone 
  • Access to a desktop computer
  • A subscription to DeepL, a web application that translates text. $6.99 per month
  • A subscription to Synthesia - an AI video creation application. $30 per month
Now for the recipe… 
  1. First, prepare what you want to say in the video. For this example, I will send a message reminding crews how to spot dangers when working around trenches. 
  2. Bullet out your thoughts beforehand to make sure I hit the right points. 
  3. Open up the rev mobile app and record what you’d like to say. Now, it is okay if you mess up. This isn’t the final version. Just speak as if you were speaking to your crew out on the jobsite. You’ll have a chance to clean up the content later. 
  4. Once you've finished your recording, choose to transcribe your recording using the "Automated Transcription" option. 
  5. When rev alerts you that your transcription is complete, download the transcription as a word file.
  6. Now, read the transcription aloud to ensure it reads naturally as if you are speaking it. Edit the transcription as needed to clean it up. 
  7. When you are done editing the English text, copy it, paste it into the DeepL application, and choose to translate it into Spanish.
  8. Copy the Spanish translation text to a new document.
  9. Now, open up Synthesia to create your English and Spanish videos.
  10. Select your avatar for the English video and select the English accent you'd like. 
  11. Copy the English text into the input and click generate video. It takes Synthesia a few minutes to generate the video. 
  12. To create the Spanish video version, open up Synthesia and create a new video. Select the avatar you'd like for the Spanish video. Paste the Spanish text into the input.
  13. Select the type of Spanish you'd like the text voiced with.
  14. Click generate video.
  15. Synthesia will notify you when your videos are done.
  16. Download the completed video.
  17. To distribute the videos, use MindForge to create a custom video course. Select Spanish as an additional language.
  18. Load up your English and Spanish content.
  19. Publish the course.
  20. And assign it to your crew.
  21. When your crews open up the course in the MindForge mobile app, they can choose which language to view the video in.

Would you like to see the finished videos and check out how well the AI did?

That’s how you can quickly create video content in both English and Spanish to ensure your entire workforce receives the same message loud and clear. This process will work for other languages, too, and there are several variations you can take on this process to help you create multilingual video content. 

In the end, communicating with workers in their native language could save a life. 

If you want to make multilingual videos and don’t have the time, reach out to us at sales@mindForge.studio, and we can help you get it done. 

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