Employee announcement subtitles. Keep the date clear.

Start with an approved recorded update

Polyglot can transcribe an authorized employee announcement locally on an Apple Silicon Mac, help you review and translate the text, and export SRT or WebVTT. Use macOS 14.4 or later. This workflow suits a planned, non-emergency update that colleagues can watch at different times, such as a change to a room-booking process.

Confirm who may receive the recording and whether you have permission to process, translate and share the voices, slides and other material it contains. Use the final approved cut. Remove private employee information from the recording before making wider copies; correcting only the subtitle file does not remove it from the audio or picture.

A recorded message is not proof that every employee has seen or understood a change. Use your organization’s required communication and approval process. Urgent instructions and sensitive individual discussions may need a different channel; subtitles do not make a delayed recording suitable for every message.

Write a date-and-scope release sheet

Before reviewing words, record the final-cut filename, recording date, approved notice revision, effective date and time zone where relevant, affected audience, exceptions, and the person responsible for publication and withdrawal. Keep each language file and its review status on the same sheet. This is a small document you maintain alongside the project, not an automatic Polyglot approval feature.

Distinguish the date the speaker recorded the update from the date the change takes effect. Check relative phrases such as ‘next Monday’, ‘from tomorrow’ and ‘until then’ against both. A viewer who finds the video a month later should not have to guess which week the speaker meant.

If the audio is ambiguous or conflicts with the approved notice, return it to the announcement owner. Correct or clarify the recording and accompanying notice before delivery. Keep captions faithful to the final audio; do not silently insert a different effective date simply because another document looks more current.

Preserve who changes what, and when

Review the clauses around each date, team name and exception. ‘The studio team can use the new form from Monday’ is different from ‘all teams must use the new form now’. Preserve permission versus obligation, the affected audience, and whether the old process remains available during a transition.

Compare spoken instructions with visible dates and the linked notice. If recognition dropped a word, repair the transcript. If the speaker and slide disagree, hold the affected delivery for an owner-approved correction. Recheck subtitle timing after any recut. The fictional sheet below illustrates that decision; it is not a real company policy or a test of model accuracy.

Fictional release sheet
Cut: room-booking-v03
Recorded: 8 October 2026
Audience: studio team only
Notice: room-booking-r02
Effective: 12 October 2026

Heard: ‘From next Monday,
the studio team can use
the new booking form.’
Slide: ‘Available today’

Owner must resolve the date.
Keep ‘can’ and team scope.
Hold every language track
until the recording agrees.

Review each language against the same approved message

Have a competent language reviewer check future and present tense, date interpretation, team names, exceptions and required actions alongside playback. Preserve ‘can’, ‘must’, ‘not yet’ and ‘only’ where they carry the instruction. Spell out ambiguous dates in an approved clarification rather than relying on a numeric date that readers interpret differently.

Check that an internal form name or link label still identifies the intended resource. Do not translate a product or department name into an unfamiliar label without an agreed choice. Record unresolved questions and keep that language out of the approved handoff until they are answered. A fluent translation is not policy approval.

W3C caption guidance also calls for relevant non-speech audio and speaker identification where needed to understand the recording. Review these manually. Polyglot does not verify company policy, identify every speaker automatically or certify that a caption track meets an organization’s accessibility obligations.

Check captions and transcript at the destination

Export a reviewed file for each approved language and the exact final cut. Check cue text, order and timing, including the final instruction. Use the receiving player’s documented format. Microsoft’s current documentation for videos in OneDrive for Business or SharePoint describes uploading WebVTT, selecting its language and replacing an existing caption/transcript file when you have edit permissions. This is a manual destination workflow, not a Polyglot integration.

Test the actual video page and any embedded player used by employees. Turn captions on, choose each language, and watch the effective-date statement, audience exception and closing next step. At a small window size, check that captions remain readable without covering the relevant date or form label. Open the transcript too: someone may read or search that text without playing the video.

Microsoft documents that the associated caption/transcript file inherits the video’s permissions. Separately downloaded VTT, SRT and text copies still need their own approved storage and sharing arrangements. Verify intended-recipient access in your platform; local subtitle processing does not enforce access rules on exported copies.

Replace or withdraw the whole announcement deliberately

When the announcement changes, mark the affected cut and languages on the release sheet. Decide with the owner whether to replace the recording and matching tracks, publish an explicit correction, or withdraw the old version. Do not make old spoken instructions appear current merely by changing the subtitle text.

After a replacement, reopen the employee-facing page, its embeds and the transcript. Confirm that the intended recording and approved language tracks appear together. Review separate attachments and copied links in the handoff inventory, and check any duplicate meeting transcript if the source was a meeting recording. Microsoft notes that deleting a video’s caption/transcript file does not also delete the Teams meeting transcript.

Keep the previous reviewed files according to your organization’s retention rules and record what was replaced, by whom and when. Polyglot prepares local subtitle files; it does not publish announcements, recall downloaded copies, collect employee acknowledgments or withdraw platform transcripts for you. Hold publication while a material date, audience or version conflict remains unresolved.

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