6 tips for cost-effective foreign language audiovisual

We live in an increasingly visual world, reliant on multimedia and dominated by social media and video sharing platforms. YouTube is the second most popular website in the world, 95% of the global population live in an area covered by a mobile network, and two-way communication platforms (such as Alexa and Siri) are becoming commonplace across the globe.

People now use video and audio to connect with their employees, partners and potential clients, and as such, the demand for high-quality audiovisual localisation grows. In such a subjective and creative industry, technology in the field continues to develop, but there are still challenges to overcome, tongue twisters to untangle and mispronunciations to correct.

But how do you ensure your foreign language audiovisual is fit-for-purpose, engaging and cost-effective?

1. Prepare: Prepare a voice-over brief. Do you want a male or a female artist? Do you want the voice-over to be instructional or friendly, and what about the pace – moderate or fast? Your language service provider can advise you on these points, especially as foreign languages may be more suited to a different tone or pace. Although regional accents are often used in English voice-overs, this is best avoided in target languages. Having this information at the start of the project helps get it completed quicker and easier.
2. Confirm: Sign-off the voice-over script before proceeding to record. Your language service provider can prepare the script, and will include a pronunciation guide to ensure company names, acronyms, and product names are spoken to match your corporate preferences.
3. High quality: Only use a language service provider who offers professional studio recordings to achieve high-quality audio, as experienced voice-over artists and sound engineers will be used. You want to avoid the risk of poor sounding audio which detracts from the user experience and may require a complete re-recording.
4. Synchronise: If you require a voice-over that synchronises with animations/videos, this needs a carefully prepared script with specific time codes, so that the correct words and audio are aligned in the foreign language. Your language service provider can prepare this, but if you already have a timed script available for the English content, supply it as reference material for the foreign language version and cut down the cost of having to prepare a new one.
5. Select: Select your preferred voice-over artist from samples or castings provided by your language service provider to ensure the audio will meet your needs.
6. Quality assurance: Check that your language service provider carries out a quality assurance stage of the recorded audio before delivery. It’s difficult to check this if you don’t speak the foreign language yourself, but you want to avoid incorrect audio which detracts from the user experience.

As long as there is a professional team of translators, voice-over artists, project managers and sound engineers working together behind every project, the quest to achieve audiovisual perfection comes closer into reach.