Native speaker directors are absolutely crucial to the success of a foreign-language voice-over recording. But their job is one of the hardest ones to explain. After all, most English-language VO sessions are done with just a recording engineer – so why not do the same for foreign-language recordings? Why, for example, does JBI Studios provide a director for every project or recording session?
This post will list the three reasons that native-speaking, professional voice-over directors are crucial to the success of an audio localization project.
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Before the session, directors review the script, the reference audio or video files, and the Pronunciation Guidelines. If anything is unclear, they check in with the project manager to make sure they fully understand the needs of the client. If the client is calling in to the session, they’re the lead point of contact in the studio, often translating between the clients and the talent. During the session, they make sure that all of the script is recorded correctly, asking the talent for re-takes if anything is wrong or unsatisfactory. They guide the engineer for where to cut in the audio, or on what parts need to be re-taken. They answer any questions from the talent, and make calls on pronunciations (based, of course, on the client’s direction and the Pronunciation Guidelines), and on the performance. Finally, once the session is done, directors communicate to the project manager any notes about the session – whether there were alternates, or if any sections were corrected per client request.
They’re absolutely necessary for three reasons.
Sure, most professional foreign language voice over talents will catch themselves flubbing a line. They’ll ask for re-takes when they think they can do a better read. But one thing is universally true about the vast majority VO talents – they often don’t hear their own mistakes. This is true of most people, of course. Try reading a long text – you’ll do great for the first page or two, but after that, you’ll start making mistakes and not realize it.
During a voice-over production, these mistakes can be anything from a mispronouncing a word (especially common with more complex content), to not following the Pronunciation Guidelines (common with projects that have many acronyms, brands or proprietary names). Often, talents will just miss or add a word, or spell out a website or long number sequences incorrectly.
Directors are the first line of defense against these mistakes. They follow the script line-by-line, word-by-word, making sure that recordings are accurate. They check pronunciations against the client-approved list quickly during recordings. And they flag any potential issues to discuss with the project manager. Without them, recording error-free sessions would be impossible.
2. Many talents aren’t fluent – or even conversational – in English.
Talent fluency varies from language to language. For example, many Latin American Spanish and Canadian French voice over talents are pretty fluent in English. Most of the really great Japanese and Korean voiceover talents, on the other hand, are not.
This creates two problems for a voice over production. First, it makes communication difficult between the audio localization services engineer and the project manager (neither of whom can speak all the languages of a translation project), and the talents. Second, it makes it difficult for the talent to pronounce loan words and English-language names and brands – which are often the trickiest part of a VO session. If the session language is in a non-Latin script (for example, for Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Urdu, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Thai, or another of many non-Latin languages), the talent may not even be able to read words in English at all.
The director – who is a native-speaker of the foreign-language, as well as fluent in English – is therefore a crucial point of communication for all the stakeholders in a production.
Directors are voice over professionals, usually with multiple years of professional experience, and often they are excellent foreign language voice talents themselves. They’re versed in the needs of different types of content in their native language – for example, how e-Learning instructional narration needs to have perfect diction and an even pace, while commercial voiceover needs to be natural and warm. When performance is critical – for example, for video games, online marketing videos, TV and radio spots, e-Learning scenarios, and film and show dubbing – directors are there to oversee a talent’s performance, providing critical feedback as the “first audience.” Finally, directors understand the needs of the studio, how to interface with clients and talents, and how to expedite sessions so that they are done on time, and avoiding costly overruns or delivery delays.
In short, directors ensure the quality and accuracy of a project. They’re not alone in this endeavor, of course. Project managers work diligently to ensure that all the assets and project specs are ready for a session, including the Pronunciation Guidelines. The studio engineer makes sure that the audio quality is top-notch, and that there are no extraneous sounds or problems in the recordings themselves. Finally, the QA reviewer checks the final recordings to ensure that they’re faithful to the script, and that all terms are pronounced correctly – in some ways checking the director’s work.
Without the director, however, this process would fall apart. The PM might not be able to communicate effectively with the talent. Many mistakes – sometimes ones that require massive amounts of re-recording – would make it to the QA stage, delaying the pick-ups and delivery timelines. And the session would almost certainly go over time, as the studio engineer struggles to communicate with the talent (especially on re-takes and cut-ins). The director is absolutely critical to ensuring the quality of the audio localization project, as well as keeping the sessions on time and on scope.