Expanding My Creativity

I have given my values increased attention in recent weeks, and I realized that creativity is something that is essential for me. I want to create, and I express that desire in cooking, baking, and writing. Of course, there are many ways I can support my itch to bring something new into the world.

In terms of work, I imagined it would revolve around writing, or its close cousin, editing; however, I began a project with an expected client that has taken me into unknown territory: AI video editing and dubbing.

A couple of months ago, a medical clinic approached me with the desire to translate and dub into English several of their videos on their Youtube channel from Russian into English. I wanted to accept, though I knew I lacked the knowledge of how to do that in the volume they were expecting. My love of creating and excitement to try new skills and help the client reach English-language viewers pushed me forward.

Through trial and error, I spent a long time studying the tools I could use. The first approach involved lots of clicking and dragging. The result wasn’t a video the client could publish, but they appreciated my effort and gave some feedback. With that, I started from scratch and found the right combination of tools to use and steps to take. Instead of several hours, I can now prepare a video in a couple of hours.

I use HeyGen to translate the video and produce an English dub of the audio. I then go through the text and edit to ensure the speaker sounds natural. Since the topic is medical advice, I also check that the terms are not too complicated. A fun part of languages is that sometimes English requires fewer or more words than Russian, which can lead to the dubbed version either speeding up or slowing down to match the video’s speed. To avoid this, I rewrite segments to keep them short or make them longer as needed. Then, I use KdenLive video editor to translate any text that is in the video and produce the final version.

It has been a fun journey exploring this new skill and learning the tools. The most important part is that It checks all the boxes for me:

• Creating
• Using my language skills
• Helping businesses reach new audiences

I continue to work with this client, and I hope to expand to similar projects soon.