Translating Your Profile

Pro actors can have the two written parts of their profile, the Mini Bio and the More About Me text, translated automatically into the other languages enCAST is published in. A casting director browsing in Italian reads your profile in Italian, one in Athens reads it in Greek, and search engines can find you in each of those languages.

It is off until you switch it on, and you can switch it off again at any time.

Who can use it #

Profile translation is a Pro feature for actors. Casting directors and talent agents can use it too, on any plan, for the text on their own profile.

If your Pro subscription ends, your translations are no longer kept up to date with your text.

Which languages your profile goes into #

Every language the site itself is published in.

You do not choose between them and there is nothing to tick language by language. When enCAST adds a new language, opted-in profiles are translated into it as well, without you doing anything.

Turning it on #

1. Go to EDIT MY PROFILE > BASIC INFO.
2. Just under the Mini Bio you will find a small box with two settings.
3. Set My profile is written in to the language you actually wrote your text in. We never guess this: two lines of text are not enough to detect a language reliably, so you tell us.
4. Tick the translation box and save.

That one setting covers both texts. There is a reminder on the Extra Info tab beside More About Me, but the setting itself lives only on Basic Info.

Your original language matters #

Whatever you choose as the language you write in is your original. It is the version everything else is made from, it is the version we treat as authoritative, and it is always what a visitor browsing in that language sees.

You do not have to write in English. If you write in Spanish, Spanish is your original and the other languages are translated from your Spanish.

If you later rewrite your profile in a different language, change this setting at the same time. Your old text simply becomes one of the translations and is redone from your new original.

What is translated, and what is not #

Only two things: your Mini Bio and your More About Me text.

Not translated:

• Your name, and the names of people, productions, companies, venues, festivals and awards. These stay exactly as you wrote them.
• Your CV, your uploaded files, your photo captions and your links.
• Messages, casting applications and anything you write to another member.

Your height, build, eye and hair colour, spoken languages, nationality, location and the rest already appear in each visitor's own language, because they are chosen from lists rather than typed. That is another good reason to put the facts in their proper fields and keep More About Me for the things that have no field of their own.

More About Me is translated after our usual tidying, so links, email addresses and phone numbers have already been removed. They are not translated, they are simply not there.

The order things happen in #

1. You save your text.
2. It is checked, exactly as any Mini Bio or More About Me is checked.
3. Once it is approved, it joins the translation queue.
4. It is translated one language at a time, and each language is published as soon as it is ready.

Nothing is ever translated before it has been approved, so an unchecked piece of text can never appear in thirteen languages.

How long it takes #

The first languages usually appear within a few hours. The full set takes longer, because every member who has opted in shares the same queue. There is nothing to do but leave it running.

While a language is still waiting, anyone browsing in it simply sees your own words. Nobody ever sees a blank profile because of this.

When you change your text #

Every edit to your Mini Bio or More About Me, even a small one, makes all thirteen translations out of date, so they are all redone from your new text.

Until each new version is ready, that language shows your original again rather than a translation of something you no longer say. The languages can never drift apart from what you have written, and a translation of an old bio is never left standing.

Turning it off #

Untick the box and save. The translations stop being shown straight away and every visitor sees your own words again, whatever language they are browsing in.

Nothing is thrown away. If you tick the box again and your text has not changed in the meantime, your translations come back immediately.

Being found in your own languages #

This is the part that is easy to miss. A translated profile gets its own web address in that language, and search engines are told it exists and which language it is in. A casting director searching in Polish for the kind of actor you are can find your profile in Polish.

Profile pages in a language we have not reached yet are deliberately kept out of search results, because a Polish address showing English text is of no use to anybody. So the more of your profile is translated, the more places you can be found.

What the translation does, and what it will not do #

Your texts are translated as what they are: your own words, in the first person, about yourself.

• Your voice is kept. Plain where you are plain, warm where you are warm.
• Nothing is added, polished or inflated. A two line bio stays a two line bio.
• Nothing is invented. If you have left More About Me empty, it stays empty in every language.
• Names are left alone.

Every translation is checked automatically before it is published: it must contain what your original contains, no more and no less, and it must not be cut short. Anything that fails is set aside rather than published, and that language keeps showing your own words instead.

Getting the best results #

• Write in clear, complete sentences. Plain writing translates beautifully.
• Wordplay, jokes and slang travel less well. A pun in English is rarely a pun in Hungarian.
• Say what you mean rather than hinting at it. Irony in particular does not survive the journey.
• If a translation reads badly, the fix is to simplify the original sentence and save. Everything is made again from your new text.
• You cannot edit the translations themselves, and there is a good reason: they would be overwritten the next time you touched your original.

The small print, in plain words #

The translations are made by machine, using an AI translation service, and only because you asked. Ticking the box is your consent for us to send your Mini Bio and More About Me text to that service for the sole purpose of translating them. Nothing else from your profile is sent. You can withdraw that consent at any time by unticking the box.

Machine translation has become very good, but it is not a human translator. The odd phrase may come out clumsy, and an industry term may occasionally be rendered strangely in a language we cannot check by hand. For that reason we cannot take responsibility for the accuracy of the translated versions, or for any misunderstanding that arises from reading one.

The text you wrote yourself is always the authoritative version of your profile, and it is always what is shown to anyone reading in the language you wrote it in.