Hi everyone!
Today I want to talk about what it means to be a Content Editor for a language-learning platform.
Officially, as of September, I became the Spanish Content Editor for FluentU, a language-learning platform that has been in the business since around 2010. They started with Asian languages (Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) and then moved to English, French, Spanish, Russian, German, Italian, and Portuguese.
The previous Editor left some months ago, so I was offered the position. It meant more work and responsibility, but also more money. I accepted the challenge! After a very arduous and long training period, I finally became their Spanish Content Editor or CE, as we call it internally.
Being a Content Editor entails many tasks, mainly:
Searching for new videos on YouTube: FluentU works with YouTube videos, so I have to look for new videos to upload to their platform. The idea is that users can learn Spanish from everyday conversations and songs, trailers, and other formats.
Uploading new videos to their platform: Once I find videos that are not yet on their platform and that are helpful to learn Spanish (they have to be school-friendly because several teachers use the videos to teach their students), the Head of Content has to check them and give you their authorization.
Transcribe and translate the videos (captions): When the videos are already uploaded to the platform, you have to transcribe them (create the captions) and translate those captions into English. The right timing of each caption is very important.
Editing: This is the most important task for an Editor. Once the captions are ready, you need to check that all the words (annotations) are properly mapped. Mapped? Yes, FluentU’s captions are interactive, which means that each word of a caption (called an annotation) has a definition and two to three examples of how the word is used. And each word can have several annotations depending on the meaning or usage of the word for each specific caption. I know, it is tricky! Prepositions are the words with the most annotations!
Text to Sound (TTS): After all the editing is finished for a video, you need to convert the text of the captions into sound, for the sound feature of the platform.
Publish: Finally, you get to publish your video on the platform! This means that the video becomes available for all the users who are learning Spanish.
Even though it takes a lot of work, it is very satisfying to be able to add new videos to the platform for the users to learn Spanish. Of course, I also deal with the users’ feedback which, most of the time, is very helpful!
So, this is, in a nutshell, what my Content Editor job entails. Have you ever worked as an editor, if so in which area or field? How was your experience? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button!
Until the next time, take care and stay safe!
XX
Translation Expert 