Spanish Voice Recordings

First question: Where is the recorded audio going to be used? In the United States, Mexico, Spain, Puerto Rico, Central America, South America… or some combination of the above? Choosing an appropriate accent is extremely important. Audiences can easily be distracted when a narrator’s accent seems “out of place,” and this impairs effective delivery of your message.

Obviously, when the destination is a single Spanish-speaking country, making voice talent selections with appropriate accents is simpler. However, when a voice recording must be used in multiple countries, ASIST will help you select voices and accents that will be most acceptable to the greatest number of listeners. Accordingly, our discussions will include questions about destination countries, which of them represent the largest proportion of the audience.

For Spanish-speaking audiences within the United States, the issue of accents is more complex—as is the selection of target Spanish dialects during the translation process itself. Specific geographical areas may have very high concentrations of a particular Spanish variety—Mexican speakers in parts of the southwestern US, or Cubans in Miami, for example. More than half of this country’s Spanish speakers do cite Mexican origin, but that still leaves a huge number of people who speak other Spanish varieties. People from other countries may not understand some vocabulary that is specific to Mexican Spanish . Often, ASIST will suggest providing multiple terms for certain items, to ensure that your “US Spanish” is as inclusive as possible; however making this flow smoothly in spoken Spanish is an art in itself. In short, you want your recorded Spanish narrations to sound “good” to the largest number of people, and to be understandable by everyone, no matter what variety of Spanish they speak.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

ASIST TRANSLATIONS: Language Services for Electronic Media

ASIST Translation Services can help you create e-learning, interactive, audio and video content for multiple languages and cultures.

- Translate narrations and onscreen text to any language
- Place translated text into video and interactive media
- Proofread onscreen text after placement
- Foreign-language voiceovers:

• Provide voice talent for dubbing videos and interactive pieces to other languages
  
• In-studio auditor ensures accuracy and inflection in voice performances
• Record voiceovers in our digital (Pro Tools-based) studio
• Edit narrations and dialog to match picture in video files
• Cultural consultation regarding language variety and spoken accent

- Collaborate in the planning of media projects that will be optimized for globalization

• Optimization and disambiguation for translation purposes
• Cultural perspectives on content, vocabulary
  
• Language support issues for specific authoring and design software

- Page layout, formatting in any language, including double-byte and right-to-left languages

ASIST routinely provides voice-over recordings for multimedia and computer-based training (Flash, AuthorWare, etc.). Narrations can be delivered as WAV, MP3 or any other required audio file format. Frequently, we deliver separate audio files for each segment, enabling interactive authors to align each scene, then adjust the timing of graphics as necessary in order to allow for larger word counts in most translations.

We can also dub videos to many different languages. For clients with in-house video editing capability, the ideal method is to export a digital video file. We use that as the onscreen reference while recording and editing translated narrations and dialogs. ASIST returns a WAV file that is already conformed to source video project. Once this translated narration is dropped in at 0:00 in the video timeline—everything lines up from beginning to end.

• In order to avoid a rushed pace in dubbed video, it helps to leave some extra padding between paragraphs or scenes in the original English version. With enough editing and/or time compression, we can make anything fit! However, this can sound rushed, especially if the translation must accurately reflect all nuances of the original English content, with no abridgment or paraphasing for time permitted. (In fact, creating a “looser” version of the original English program for dubbing purposes is a strategy that globalization-savvy content producers incorporate into their project plan.)

ASIST translates for all types of Web content. We have translated large sites supporting dozens of languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese and various others that don’t use Latin characters. Proofreading before the client goes live with the formatted content is one of the crucial services that ASIST provides. Even in languages using Latin character sets, longer string length, line break issues and diacritical marks can be problematic if they are not reviewed by a qualified linguist.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com