If you're commissioning a new video or multimedia, tell the producer if you might need foreign language versions some time in the future.

It's important that both the scriptwriter and the video editor know this, and can plan ahead accordingly.

This will almost always save you money.

In particular they need to avoid creating video with "wall-to-wall" commentary - in other words, with a continuous voiceover and no pauses.

What can happen then is that the narrator has to gabble or the script has to be edited and shortened.

To give you an idea, typical English voiceover is 100 words per minute, while French is 125 words per minute (much faster), while German is only 90 words per minute (or less), while Russian is even slower.

It pays to plan in advance.