[Philip Howells]

As others have said this is not the way to go about making a dual language programme.

There are two elements, the narration and the interviews.

The narration must be translated by a professional who can translate to time, ie so that the foreign language narration fits the inage edit. Inevitably this may involve some compromise but if the writer’s a pro it should work.

The interviews can be transcribed and translated to time as the narration or subtitled. The choice will depend on the acceptability of subtitling to the audience and budget eg English-speaking audiences are relatively unused to subtitles, whilst French audiences have got used to subtitles since so much of the material they see originates elsewhere.

Having said that the majority of films that reach the cinemas in France these days are overdubbed in French.

Finally, if the programme is to genuinely appear to have been made for the foreign language audience there should be budget to re-edit the images to suit a translation to “quality” (ie without compromise) not to time.

[Philip Howells]

Those of us who work in an international environment also need to remember that copyright law varies from country to country. This makes clear an explicit Terms of Business even more important.

That way we make it clear that our client gets copyright only in the programme material and anything else we shoot or create remains ours.

We’ve had this since the incident some may recall when a still photographer doing a day’s work for a local authority in California heard a bang and simply as a reaction snapped a 727 that had collided with a Cessna or some other small plane crashing in flames. The dramatic pictures were syndicated around the world and earned the local authority thousands of dollars – the photographer got his day’s fee.

Best regards
Philip