VENDORS BY RANK FOR:

• International voice recording

• Script translation

• Web subtitling

• YouTube captioning

• Captions to subtitles

5 STAR:

VOICE-OVERS AND TRANSLATION
@International Services
Services: Five star ranking in script translation and perfectly-timed voice recording around the world.

SUBTITLES AND WEB SUBTITLES
Subtitle Your Video.com
Services: Choice to do-it-yourself online or click for professional services. Unlike any other vendor.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE TRANSCRIPTION AND TIMECODING
Global Director Center
Services: Several cool online software for producers and directors plus Global Casting Center.

CONVERTING CAPTIONS TO SUBTITLES
Translate Your Captions
Services: Choice of software to do-it-yourself or click for professional support.

YOU TUBE SRT FILE, YOU TUBE SUBTITLES
Subtitle Your Video.com
Services: Choice of approach to create subtitles/captions for YouTube and srt file.

SELECTING A VENDOR

When searching for professional foreign language voiceovers or translation services, the internet is a maze of possibilities. Many voiceovers sound lovely to you, but you hear horror stories of ferocious accents, laughter from the viewing audience, and rejection by a client. Whether you need translation and voiceovers for Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, German, Hebrew, Arabic or any other language, this BLOG is the ultimate portal to narrow the field of suppliers of foreign language voiceovers, and is a place to gain insight regarding lip sync (ADR) voiceovers, script adaptation, font styles, “taboos” in b-roll, color localization, audio mixing styles, and other related information.

Major categories that determine quality:

1. 100% full time professional foreign language voiceovers
Services differentiate in their quality between offering professional talent for voiceovers versus amateur. Professionals are those who make their full living in studio, amateurs do voice recording “on the side”. This is often confused in conversation, because the business word “professional” simply means that you are paid for a service, thus many voices are listed as “professionals” simply for receive money in exchange rather than as a reflection of quality. In the realm of true professional foreign language voiceovers, these fall into two categories: (1) freelance professional foreign language voiceover talent, and (2) “drone” speakers. The first (1) freelance professionals are the most versatile, most diverse in their performance and impact because they do voiceovers for many, many producers and directors from advertising to television to corporate work in the native country of their language (not external). The second (2) drone voice speakers, record the same type of text every time they are in studio, and although their voices may be pretty, their impact grows less and less due to, quite frankly, boredom with the script content and lack of pressure to achieve good results to keep their job. This second is not obvious to a non-native speaker, because the voice is nice, so the end result of a training course or corporate video may be quite a bit less effective on the viewer than imagined by the creator.

2. Length of time in business and proven reliability in voiceovers
It is fairly easy to go to the internet and just grab contact info, and a flurry of new “foreign language voiceovers” sites have begun to appear. In many cases, the accents and pronunciations of the foreign language voiceovers have not been scrutinized or tested by true professionals in that language, placing the responsibility for quality assurance of accent and pronunciation on the shoulders of the producer or director using that talent.

3. Native speaking audio engineers and editors all languages
As in your own language, editing foreign voiceovers is more assured of accuracy when done by a native speaking professional audio engineer. When editing recordings outside of one’s own language, often edits are too clipped or hurried, wrong “takes” are used, or less effective “takes” are included in the end result, or missed altogether.

4. On-demand professional studio talent directors for voiceovers
In advertising, whether for Spanish, Mandarin, Italian, Swedish, Dutch or other language, with foreign language voiceovers, just like with our own voice talents, the director makes or breaks a recording. For corporate work, many recordings, particularly those in which the talent for the voiceovers and the studios are underpaid, the recordings are made in a “drone” manner, with a talent alone hour after hour, either behind their own home-studio microphone, or alone in a studio with the same engineer hour after hour. A performance director keeps the performance of the voiceovers at peak impact, and removes the monotony from an actor’s performance. Plus, a true professional director assures maximum impact of the final recording.

5. Professional voiceovers actors versus stage/movie actors
A significant criteria that differentiates talents is the difference between voice actor and stage actor (or movie actor). At first glance, the assumption is that these two are the same. But then we realize that the power and strength of a stage or movie actor is not their voice, it is the whole combination of facial expression, body, gestures, and lastly fluctuations of the voice. Whereas a fine voice actor wins hands-down in the voice quality department, bringing vocal beauty, credibility and believability to your project.

6. No accent creep
When the talents for voiceovers live outside their native country, quite soon, an accent begins to creep into his or her spoken native language. The first step is that they begin to speak English words better than a native of their country would. Speaking English too well is a dead giveaway that the voice talent is not located in the native country. Then, after 4 or 5 years, an actual English accent will begin to be introduced into the pronunciation of his or her native language. The more years in exile, the more accented becomes their speech.

The above applies to almost all languages:

Spanish voiceovers, French voiceovers, Mandarin voiceovers aka Chinese voiceovers, German voiceovers, Japanese voiceovers,  Russian voiceovers, Korean voiceovers, Portuguese voiceovers, Meican voiceovers, foreign voiceovers, foreign language voice talent, foreign language voiceovers, international voiceovers, and more.