Mandarin Voiceover Accents and Talent Selection

CHINESE VOICE TALENTS: The Mandarin Chinese language is evolving more rapidly than any other language on earth. Hong Kong, for example, is currently making a fusion between Cantonese and Mandarin, with a different accent and dialect of Mandarin, a Mandarin that is in dramatic flux. Taiwanese Mandarin has a strong variation in both accent and word usage. And Chinese spoken inside the United States has also become a dialect. Below you can audition Mandarin voice talents for Beijing, Mandarin voiceover talents for Taiwan, plus other Chinese voiceover talents, including Cantonese.

The Mandarin voice-over talents offered by @International Sevices, for example, include not only professional Mandarin voice talents for advertising, but also the most prized talents with the most coveted of all performances - the anchors of Central Television. That company offers literally the most coveted style of Mandarin voice recording in the world. Rare, rare, rare. And, because of the economy, plus the fact that @International Services was the first company permitted to record unsupervised in China, the costs of these recordings are extremely affordable, even inexpensive and well worth the investment.

Beijing has a very limited experience in lip sync, because of the previous tight control of all media by the Chinese government, but will find good support for the following:

• Mandarin voiceovers, Cantonese, Taiwanese recorded directly in the target country
• Telephone voice prompts with Mandarin voice talent, Czech voice talent, and other
• Commercials for international television, radio and internet advertising with Mandarin voice talent, Czech voice talent…
• Mandarin voice-over narration and other narration for Power Point presentations
• Excellent Mandarin voiceover talent and others for product demos that make an excellent impression
• Chinese, Czech and Mandarin voicing and narration for internet television and intranet podcasts

Part of the secret to a good performance from fine Chinese voice-over talents, or Malay or Norwegian, is correct adaptation of the talent script. After translation, scripts are some 15% longer than an original language script. This is simply due to the differences in human language. Therefore, the talent script must be correctly adapted in order to be spoken in sync within the timing of the original guidetrack.

Studio and Producers Q & A: Part 2

Q:  I have a client who is looking for a cost on translating and recording voiceovers for a project into 10 languages.  I’d love to say “yes” but there are huge sections that have dialogs between people, and lips moving on screen.  Should I accept this job, and if yes, how can I handle it?

A: First, always accept the job!  You can handle it easily if you have the right foreign voiceovers vendor – one that can both adapt the script properly for lip sync, as well as has the talent and experience to record the lip sync voice track with experienced professional talent.  Lastly, that voice track must be perfectly timed so that you can just drop it into your project and mix.  There are only a few companies that are qualified.  One is this year’s International Quality Source, @International Services, mentioned on our home page.  They record lip sync tracks in 70 countries.  There are only 1 maybe 2 other qualified companies to assist with lip sync in your 10 languages.  So, if you outsource the difficult part, the lip sync script adaptation and the foreign voiceovers talent track, then your part of the project is a “piece of cake”, yet your profit margin can often be extremely high, because so few producers are aware how easy it is to handle such projects and don’t bid on them.

Studio and Producers Q & A: Part 1

Q:  We’re an audio studio and we’ve had huge time losses in foreign language voice sessions because the scripts are too long or the talents can’t speak the copy well.  The clients bring script checkers, and they keep running back and forth into the talent booth to rewrite copy.  So, when we submit our final invoice, we are constantly having to explain why our studio costs are much higher compared to our estimates.  What is this story?

A: Ahhhh.  Yes this is a painful experience, isn’t it?  There may be a few things at play here.  First, any translation is probably around 10% to 15% longer than the original English.  So, a 30 second commercial becomes a 37 second commercial.  So, is obvious that script translations for voiceovers must be rewritten for the correct timing of the original English.  And it must be rewritten without losing your message or important content.  Secondly, is your voice talent a professional?  This affects the speed at which they can speak in studio.  Then, if is a professional and they are still having trouble speaking the text, is probably because they are trying to speak a translation that is the “written word” as opposed to the “spoken word”.  You can count on one hand the translation companies that know the difference.