The challenges of voice-over translation

Jasmine Carolina

Last updated: January 8th, 2022

Five minute read

Whether it’s for a simple piece of audio narration or a full lip-sync dub, voice-over translation is a necessary service in today’s world as businesses expand into different markets around the world.

This brings a few challenges with the biggest being sounding natural. With a professional and successful piece of work involving multilingual voice-over, the finished content should sound natural and as though it has been created especially for any given audience.

Some companies choose the same approach to voice-over translation as regular text translation, this is a dangerous game to play because a voice offers so much more in terms of tone, speed, delivery, and timing (when recorded for video).

Here are the four multilingual voice-over challenges you need to keep in mind:

Matching the audio to the video

When translating into another language, there’s almost certainly going to be a difference in length between one and the other.

The longer the script, the more obvious this difference will be. Despite popular belief, this isn’t just because one language has longer or shorter words; instead, it’s because different nationalities use different sayings and compose their sentences in different ways.

With this in mind, the first consideration should be between the video and the audio. Are you going to trim the audio to match the video? Or are you going to shoot extra footage to add to it and make the video longer?

Also, your cue words are likely to be different. Since sentences in other languages are composed differently, your cue words might now be at the end of the sentence rather than sitting at the beginning.

Getting lip-sync dubbing right

Although less rare and typically reserved for fictional content (which cannot be translated with as much freedom and artistic license), you may need dubbing, which is trickier.

Once again, timing is the single most important factor because the dubbed audio still needs to match up to the video as closely as possible. In truth, you’re likely to need specialised multilingual agency for the job, as they work with translators and proof-readers who’ve built up the skills required over a period of years.

The lip-sync dubbing translation process can be time-consuming and expensive as the script might need rewriting several times until its translation and message match correctly in the target language.

Conveying your marketing message

Unless the script is highly technical with not a lot of freedom for interpretation, translation can require creativity sometimes. The text becomes the soul of a new video and audio, aimed at people who interpret things differently.

As we’ve mentioned previously, different countries will have different sayings, phrases, and idioms and this is important to remember.

If you’re saying ‘Bob’s your uncle’ to a country who has no idea what this means, people will just get confused. That’s why good translators who deal with multilingual voice-over know how to translate the message and meaning - not the text.

Choosing the languages

When planning your project, you also need to be aware of the languages and dialects you might need. Although this sounds like something you can’t get wrong, you have to remember that there can be multiple languages used within the same country.

For example, China is one of the most complex examples you’ll find with Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Mandarin, and more. Furthermore, you should remember the different regions within certain countries.

If we use Canada as an example, a significant chunk of Canadians are actually French Canadians (this includes Montreal, Quebec, and Nova Scotia).

Completing a translation project for a multilingual video with voice-over can be tricky - as we’ve seen with the list of challenges above. But now that you have a better idea of what to expect, you can find the right agency to help create a video that resonates with your audience.