5 Tips to Casting Dubbing Voice-Over Talents for E-Learning Scenarios

Lip-sync dubbing for e-Learning and skills training scenarios is one of the most labor-intensive multimedia localization services. This is true as well of the casting process, in which a director decides which foreign-language voice talents will play which characters. Not only does casting this content require more work, but it also requires different strategies from the ones used to cast TV shows and feature films.

This post will list five tips to help localization professionals cast their next e-Learning translation project.

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Dubbing for eLearning scenarios is tricky in general

Why? For starters, e-Learning often contains instructional, legally-binding, or highly technical content, all of which must be translated with a very high degree of accuracy. Lip-sync, on the other hand, requires drastic script editing so that the final translations will line up with a characters’ lips on screen. As you can imagine, these two needs – translation accuracy and editing for lip-sync – conflict with one another.

For more information on the specific challenges for these kinds of productions, check out our previous post, Video Translation: Lip-Sync for eLearning & Corporate Content.

Casting professional voice-over talents for these kinds of projects can be quite tricky too, and not just because of the overall difficulty of translating and voicing the content. Scenario videos are short and don’t contain a huge number of characters (usually), as opposed to most TV shows and feature films, which generally have 30-40 speaking parts (though some are really small). Also, scenario videos often get bundled together into large packages for multimedia localization – for example, of 10-15 courses, all with different location and character setups – as opposed to films and TV, in which characters and locations are re-used.

These differences in how the scenarios are created, edited, and bundled for translation also affect the casting process, and this is what the five following tips address specifically.

1. Talent separation is only really required per course.

A video bundle for 10 courses may have 30-40 videos, with as many as 80 distinct characters. This may suggest that this bundle will require a large number of voice-over talents, but it’s good to remember that each course usually only has 3 or 4 videos, and that most people don’t take multiple courses at once. Instead, they take breaks between them that last from a few hours to days or weeks. Therefore, talent separation – making sure that talents don’t do too many characters – only really needs to take each course into account, rather than the full bundle of courses.

2. But – cast the same talent for multi-course characters.

Keep in mind, though, that some course developers have recurring characters, especially when developing large suites of courses around a specific topic. For example, a developer may decide to spoof superhero movies for a series on workplace ethics, creating a character called “Captain Common Sense.” In this case, it’d be imperative to make sure the same voice-over talent plays Captain Common Sense in all of the videos. In fact, as eLearning video production is becoming more sophisticated and involving bigger budgets, developers are starting to adopt TV and feature production techniques. Many developers now create full character bios and character arcs, for example, which can be incredibly useful when casting.

3. Much smaller small roles.

The smaller roles in scenarios are really small – sometimes even just one or two words. Coupled with the overall level of talent separation from one course to another, this means that it’s safer to cast talents who need to change their voices drastically for these roles.

4. Get talents who can really “sell” the sync.

Sometimes the translated script doesn’t line up particularly well with the original actor’s lip movements, for example when it’s impossible to shave one or two syllables off the script, or to move a particularly jarring vocalization. In these cases, the director relies on the talent to “sell the sync.” The talents can speed up, slow down, change their overall phrasing, and even distort their embouchure just a little to help the lip-sync illusion – this is where their skill and artistry really pays off. As you can imagine, the accuracy requirements of these projects usually require the talents to sell the sync quite a bit.

For more on the different skills these talents possess, check out our previous post, Video Translation 101: 4 Qualities of a Great Lip-Sync Talent.

5. Get talents who can do long lines.

Finally, scenarios are usually shot in a simpler style, with less coverage and more close-ups. For example, it’s not unusual for a scenario to be just one shot – a medium 2-shot, like the one in the screen capture above, which lasts the full time of the scene. Movies and TV shows, on the other hand, usually cut to different angles and to coverage shots while characters speak, meaning that not every line in the dialogue has a corresponding lip movement on screen. Not so with scenarios, in which usually every single line is on-screen and completely visible – therefore, it’s crucial to cast from talents who can handle content with “long lines,” or entire lines on screen.

You’re probably seeing a pattern here. Not all dubbing talents are great for scenario videos. This isn’t one of the tips in the post, but it’s probably the best advice in the whole piece – when lip-syncing e-Learning and corporate scenarios, make sure to get talents who are used to this kind of content. Scenarios don’t require the same intensity of acting – no crying, shouting, fighting or other intense emotions like in TV or film content – but they do require more on-the-spot line memorization, a greater facility with language and sight-reading, perfect diction, and, again, the ability to sell the sync even when the translated script really doesn’t line up. Making sure that you get the right talents – and of course, a post vendor like JBI Studios that has extensive experience with scenarios – is the key to getting your video & multimedia localization done right the first time.