0176 - Writing A Script To Be Translated

Get A Better Broadcast, Podcast and Voice-Over Voice

English - June 24, 2021 23:01 - 3 minutes - 2.12 MB - ★★★★ - 4 ratings
Arts Business voiceover your speaking voice voice over training voiceover hour voiceover social Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: 0175 – Your Written Direction

Next Episode: 0177 – Marking Up A Script

2021.06.25-0176 - Writing A Script To Be Translated

Writing a script that’s to be translated

Foreign languages may be, literally, all Greek to you, in which case don’t rely on auto-translators. They’re increasingly accurate but they miss the nuance of a language, and you could end up being an ‘idiom idiot’.

Instead hire a professional translator who’s not only studied that second language but also has ‘lived it’ and knows how it’s spoken in real life in that country – a native speaker perhaps. That way you will avoid literalisations – there are dozens of examples on the internet.

Translation is different from localisation

Translation is the basic conversion of a script from one language to another.

Localisation involves customisation not only for everyday speech, but also for the specific target audience. Not all languages are structured grammatically like English, so customisation would consider linguistic nuances such as cultural conventions, how the ‘official’ language is spoken in that geographical region (or country – ‘Spanish Spanish’ is different from ‘Mexican Spanish’ for example, and that would also affect pronunciation), conversational turns of phrase and so on, but also the demographic of the audience. For example, is the commercial extoling the virtues of the new car to a family audience, a business person or a fleet buyer. The structure of a sentences may need to be changed depending on the social conventions of the target audience.

The nuances used in your original, own-language script will be targeted correctly, but a literal translation may lead to rejection and possible reputational damage, so the more you’re able to literally and figuratively, “speak their language”, the more likely it is that you will succeed.

Through these around-5-minute episodes, you can build your confidence and competence with advice on breathing and reading, inflection and projection, the roles played by better scripting and better sitting, mic techniques and voice care tips... with exercises and anecdotes from a career spent in TV and radio studios. If you're wondering about how to start a podcast, or have had one for a while - download every episode!

And as themes develop over the weeks (that is, they are not random topics day-by-day), this is a free, course to help you GET A BETTER BROADCAST, PODCAST AND VIDEO VOICE.

Look out for more details of the book during 2021.

Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart

Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1 to Heart FM, the classical music station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama. Other trainees have been music presenters, breakfast show hosts, travel news presenters and voice-over artists.

He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation and production (“Essential Radio Journalism”, “JournoLists”, two editions of “Essential Radio Skills” and three editions of “Broadcast Journalism”) and has written on voice and presentation skills in the BBC’s in-house newspaper “Ariel”.

Peter has presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional radio) with formats as diverse as music-presentation, interview shows, ‘special’ programmes for elections and budgets, live outside broadcasts and commentaries and even the occasional sports, gardening and dedication programmes. He has read several thousand news bulletins, and hosted nearly 2,000 podcast episodes, and is a vocal image consultant advising in all aspects of voice and speech training for presenters on radio and TV, podcasts and YouTube, voiceovers and videocalls.

The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being acted upon) by your target audience?

This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP (Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation, although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects.

Music credits:

"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/7012-bleeping-demo