Foreign film/language dialog editing

[InternJesse]

I was just curious as to how most people do dialogue editing on films primarily in a language other than the one they know. Is it common to simply get an engineer who speaks the language to do the editing? Or do you have someone hanging out who can interpret?

[Mundox]

It depends what the language is.
You could probably follow most western languages from the script unless there are adlibs. But eastern stuff, you need help. I can only understand English and Turkish but have edited stuff in almost all European languages, and in Maori with just a script, and they haven't come back.

[subbasshead]

My co-supervisor managed dialogue for THE ORATOR which was entirely in Samoan, and he relied on the director (who is Samoan) to provide input on correct editing and meaning but also on accent. As we all know, there is as much meaning in the way something is said as in the words themselves, so having someone who is fluent in the language & its context & use in the film is essential imho

[ErikG]

But it IS hard and filled with risks.
Even when languages are pretty similar it can be very hard to catch nuances, jokes etc, and also judge what can be understood and what needs to be replaced/reworked.

[Mundox]

I must add, my comments were for dialog editing, and not necessarily for film. I just wanted to clarify that as I misread the title of the thread.
For film work it probably is almost impossible to edit dialog properly in another language you don't understand.

[Lipflap]

Virtually every film for which I edit the dialogue is in a language other than my mother tongue. Some of these languages I speak—with varying degrees of proficiency—but at times I’m out on a limb when it comes to alternate takes and weird dialogue manipulations. Not for a minute would I suggest that anyone who is not massively fluent in the language of the film should be the first choice for dialogue editor. All things being equal, a person who understands the nuance and song of the language is the guy to pick. But life is weird.

If the language of the film is related to something that you understand, then you can at least rely on cognates, you will understand the rhythm and the “music” of the language, and you will know where sentences start and stop, so that you can have something to grab onto when you’re looking for alternate takes or otherwise mucking about. But that’s far from comforting.

When I don’t have a clue about the language, I turn the original phrase into a “children’s song,” converting the actual language into a series of musical sounds that I can use for finding the closest equivalent within the rushes. This makes finding the line easier and, more importantly, it eases the task of getting the “song” and energy of the replacement phrase to match the original. It’s very time consuming, but it’s a good start.

If it’s a language that I truly don’t get, several times during the editing I will bring in a translator, preferably someone from the production who understands the film. His/her job is to look for “foolishness” that I’ve created (too much/too little of a word, inflection issues that I didn’t manage well, and other things that are truly stupid) and to make sure I haven’t messed with the quality of the acting. However, if I’m pretty comfortable with the language, I’ll rely on the director screenings to sort things out and make final choices.

Oddly, this system works pretty well, and for no logical reason I usually manage to do a decent job. Again, it’s far better to use an editor who has mastered the language of the film, but at times geography or skill of the local market means that you just gotta manage.

[Pebble Mill]

I've been asked this a few times from people and didn't know the answer. This will become a useful reference.

Mr Purcell, I love the approach of converting phrases into songs or nursery rhymes in order to make them more familiar.

Very creative

[Whitecat]

I did a film recently that was half Hindi, half English - wasn't told this until day 1 of the sound edit. It was a short so I had very good access to the director who thankfully was fluent in both.

Basically had to rely on the director's ear, but no massive problems came up. I ran stuff by him a little more often than I normally might, especially when there were any intra-word edits. A lot of it was worried guessing, relying on the similarity of sounds and hoping for the best, but it all worked out, thankfully, I did not alter the meaning of any sentences so that they were changed from innocuous to offensive which was my main concern...!

[D'Animation]

Would be awesome if they ported the phrase-find plugin from Media Composer, went to a Avid demo and it looked really useful for finding native language alts, never mind foreign language uses..
Avid | PhraseFind

[danijel]

Originally Posted by D'Animation

Would be awesome if they ported the phrase-find plugin from Media Composer, went to a Avid demo and it looked really useful for finding native language alts, never mind foreign language uses..
Avid | PhraseFind

Wicked!

[Whitecat]

PhraseFind is amazing - but it's limited in what languages it supports and additional languages cost money.

Even for English edits I usually import all the production dialogue alts into an Avid bin and I use it to find stuff quickly - just pop over to Media Composer and have a hunt. You need to get clever about how you look for stuff though since it's phonetic!

I think someone has asked for it to be built-in to Pro Tools as an option on the PT Ideascale, so definitely upvote it!

[Steven1145]

Originally Posted by Mundox

For film work it probably is almost impossible to edit dialog properly in another language you don't understand.

Agreed! A few years ago I mixed an Iranian film by Jafar Panahi, and we would often need to go into the dialog and to tweeks (and I'm not even talking about the whole dialog editing, just some changes during the mix). Luckily the director, though not an English speaker, knew enough about what was going on on the DAW screen to point to things he found OK or not, and we got through just fine. We did have an interpretor present, but let's say that tech talk wasn't her strong point.

[Steven1145]

Originally Posted by D'Animation

Would be awesome if they ported the phrase-find plugin from Media Composer, went to a Avid demo and it looked really useful for finding native language alts, never mind foreign language uses..
Avid | PhraseFind

Didn't know about that! Definitely worth giving it a try for dialog editing. I knew our AVID MC license would come in handy one day