Creative Services
For all companies working in the international arena, existing creative investments can be cost-effectively localized to each specific market. Existing film and other audio/visual material can be adapted through dubbing, voice-overs and subtitling. In addition, V&L's team of international talent can produce all-new audio/visual and graphic material to effectively address international audiences in a more targeted and authentic manner.
Voice-over narration is one of the most widely-used methods of internationalizing audio and visual communication, and applies to entertainment firms with consumer-oriented content as well as businesses who have developed video material to connect with their employees and clientele. Dubbing is commonly used in television and film and is an extremely effective way of localizing film. Not only is it applicable to entertainment companies, but it can also be applied to various training, corporate and industrial videos.
V&L's experience in this industry is supported by state-of-the-art digital recording equipment and the most captivating foreign language talent available. Our strategic location in Los Angeles, the heart of the entertainment industry, gives us access to Hollywood's technical and human resources and greatly enhances our capabilities in this area.
Since even a slightly flawed accent can tarnish the credibility of the message, all V&L voice talent has been screened for professionalism and impeccable native fluency. With these considerations in mind, we have built an impressive library of talent that represents more than 100 languages in an abundance of voices. V&L is certain to find the voice that fits your project perfectly.
Whether the source material is in analog format as part of an audio cassette or videotape, or in digital format as part of a multimedia piece, V&L is able to deliver the level of technology required to implement the project efficiently and cost-effectively. This particularly pertains to high-tech multimedia products such as CD-ROM, DVD or Web-based audio protocols. Our level of technology is one key factor that makes V&L different from translation-only firms.
V&L's voice-over process includes:
- Transcription of native language text
- Translation into the target language
- Timing of the translated text in the target language against the video content
- Modification of translated text for timing considerations, ensuring that the translated text is accurately timed to blend with the pace of the source language
- Procurement of talent, generally offering several native language speakers from which the client can choose voice(s)
- Studio work to record the translated text
If desired, V&L can reintegrate the translated audio into its source whereby the client receives a completely new version in their language of choice. It is also important to note that V&L works closely with the client at each stage in the process to ensure the highest comfort level with the talent, the translation, and the project as a whole.
V&L International offers subtitling services as a cost-effective and time-efficient alternative to voice-over services. As with voice-over narration, subtitling is a viable and widely-used method of internationalizing audio and visual communication. V&L can accommodate nearly any medium, including CD-ROM, videotape, DVD, film, and Web formats.
V&L can assist you in making the fundamental choice between voice-overs and subtitling of audio/visual content. Depending on your specific project, V&L will analyze time and budget considerations, matched against the size and nature of the source material. Whether the source material is a 2-hour feature film, a 60-second commercial, or a 10-minute corporate video, V&L can accommodate your request.
V&L's subtitling expertise combines linguistic accuracy with exacting technical standards. Just as voice-overs require space consideration to ensure that the narrated translation is in time with the video content, subtitles require space consideration to ensure that the audience can simultaneously view the on-screen image and read the subtitles. To prevent translated text from becoming too long for a typical viewer to read, subtitling typically requires "paring" of up to 60 percent off the original dialog. V&L is expert in doing the translation and the subsequent text-"paring" required to achieve this balance, accommodating the industry-standard maximum of two 25 or 35-character lines every 5 seconds.
In addition, V&L takes the following factors into consideration for each project:
- Expansion - In translation, it is quite common for a block of text to expand when translated into the target language as a function of the various alphabets, grammatical structures and vocabularies of different languages. Our producers, engineers and linguists are experienced with this issue, and work to resolve it by reducing fonts, editing text, or performing some combination thereof to ensure the best possible outcome.
- Special Character Sets - Whichever alphabet you desire, V&L has it available. This includes Arabic, Chinese (simplified or traditional), Cyrillic, Korean, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese and many others.
In addition to adapting existing graphics and layout for an international market, V&L's graphic design team can create original artistic material for a given market to the highest industry standard, and artistically appropriate for the target language and culture. As with our graphic localization services, our staff uses industry-standard versions of QuarkXpress, Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, PageMaker, and other graphic design software packages.
V&L's talent is from all over the world in a variety of disciplines, including voice, acting, writing, film, and music. In combining this multinational talent with other linguistic, production and engineering resources, V&L can create world-class content developed for specific international markets.
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