Foreign Language Voice Recordings
The written word is only one way to convey information and with the explosion of multimedia over the last decade more and more clients are asking for audio versions of their translations. These recordings can be used on web sites for training or information, or on CD for distribution, or as voice tracks on DVDs and other video formats. The result is the same: more people can understand your message and will have access to your products or services.
Adelphi Translations has its own in-house voice recording studio which keeps the cost of producing foreign language recording very reasonable. We understand that, most of the time, you are not producing audio for broadcast; neither do you need ‘actors’ and famous names for your recording. A clear and pleasant speaking voice is often all that is needed and, over the years, we have built up a supply of good voices in many languages, both male and female.
Timed and Untimed Recordings
Foreign language voice recording projects come in two flavours: timed and untimed. Untimed scripts are quicker and cheaper to produce as there is less work in pre and post-production. It gets more complicated when a vocal track has to fit into a time slot, such as when a voice-over is being produced for a training video or DVD audio track. Recordings suffer from the same problems as typeset documents as most foreign languages expand from the original English. This means that it is necessary to edit and accurately time the vocal segments, which is more time consuming and, therefore, costly.
If a video or recording is made in English with the knowledge that it will later be translated and recording in another language a few steps can be taken to make it easier and cheaper. Give the audio room to breathe. Many amateur videos coonsist of non-stop talking, with very little space between scenes. As well as being tiring to your original audience it will mean that the foreign language version will have to be heavily edited and the speaker may have to talk faster than is natural to fit within the tme availabke.
Remember the ‘garbage in – garbage out’ mantra. If your original English is garbled and grammatically incorrect it will be very difficult to translate accurately. Take time with your script, if you have one, and make sure it is clear and concise. Of course, interviewees speaking to camera will tend to be less accurate with their language but for voice-over scripts or narrations clear English is essential.
Audio Formats
Because we produce and edit our audio here in our own digital studio at Adelphi we can deliver the format you need. Stereo or mono, wav, mp3, aiff etc. We can re-author DVDs or add sound tracks to any format of video. So if you have a project which requires audio speak to the experts at Adelphi and everything will be sound!
Samples Page
Click here to visit our foreign language audio samples page : voice-over-samples
