Finding Jack.org’s voice in the French-speaking market

Services

Translation
Subtitling
Copywriting

As an essentially anglophone organization, Jack.org reached out to us in fall 2020 for help finding its voice in the French-speaking market. The Canadian charity’s mission is to train young people between the ages of 15 and 24 to become mental health advocates in their schools and communities. It does this by offering an array of programs and organizing numerous awareness-raising events.

After nearly three years, Jack.org has become one of our language services team’s top clients.

Our approach

• Ensure the client’s voice comes through in all the content we produce
• Use safe and inclusive mental health vocabulary that resonates with young people
• Manage client requirements and multiple deadlines using agile principles

Diving into the Be There Certificate programs

In 2022, we were approached about translating, writing, and subtitling materials for the French- and Spanish-language Be There Certificate programs. The Be There Certificate is a free, self-paced, and interactive online training program designed to increase mental health literacy among youth.

Objectives

• Translate the Be There Certificate into French and Spanish
• Write multiple-choice, true-or-false, and “complete the sentence”-style questions for video questionnaires in both languages
• Apply inclusive writing standards whether writing or translating in either language
• Generate concise transcripts for subtitling (French and Spanish)
• Translate subtitles accurately (French and Spanish)
• Edit subtitles in SRT format for delivery to the client

Common values

Our main challenge with this client is the need to adopt inclusive, epicene writing. Given that Jack.org is a youth-led, youth-run organization dedicated to promoting mental health and inclusivity, this approach, which consists in avoiding gendered constructions, is imperative. We therefore use epicene writing wherever possible.

Though it isn’t yet widespread, this practice is growing increasingly common.