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Translation Services: Audio/Video Language Conversion Services

Linguistic Systems, Inc.'s audio-visual professionals have prepared language conversions of films, videos, presentations, and multimedia for more than 30 years. These conversions enable your organization to reach to vast populations that do not use English.

We work closely with you to determine the best way to adapt your materials for your target market before starting production. Our process includes client review, feedback, and approval as essential for producing the product that best suits your needs. Often our clients monitor recording sessions to ensure that timing, voice quality, volume, emphasis, and mixing of music and sound effects are exactly right. The foreign language version must be equal to the English original in all respects.

We produce:

• Promotional, training, and instructional videos
• Multimedia programs on CD-ROM
• Multilingual audio tours for museums and other tourist attractions
• Slides and overheads for presentations
• Video translation and narration

Your Choices

Our professional staff has experience using several different techniques to adapt videos or audio tracks to other languages. These include:

• Lip-synching, where foreign language actors' voices are carefully dubbed onto on-camera actors
• Voice-over production, a UN-style technique that replaces the existing narrator's voice with a narrator speaking another language, yet allows the original audio to be heard suppressed in the background
• On-screen text replacement and subtitling, an on-screen written translation of the original audio, which remains unaltered.

While most clients choose voice-over narration, subtitling or lip-synching may be preferable for certain situations. LSI has an inventory of almost 200 male and female professional voices to choose from for more than 20 of the most common foreign languages. Professional narrator voice samples are available on request. Tape samples can be provided to help the client select the most appropriate voices.

The Process

Before recording the voice-over, lip-synching, or typesetting the subtitles, the original script must first be translated. Essential in this type of translation work is the timing, editing, and fitting of the script for video so it will exactly match the existing audio and images. Our translators are experienced in converting scripts to video and very familiar with the timing issue.

Once a client approves the translation of the script, work in the studio begins. There the foreign language narrator listens to the English through a headset while reciting the translated script. We record each section several times until the monitor is satisfied with the timing and quality of the recording. Finally, the foreign language narration is inserted in place of the English on the master, guaranteeing synchronization with the picture.

Lip-Synching: For programs with a great deal of on-camera talking, LSI provides lip-synching services ("dubbing for video") in all common commercial languages. For this work we use only highly specialized, experienced professionals and the best state-of-the-art facilities available in North America.

Voice-Over Production: An economical way to create foreign language versions of your video programs or segments is to replace the English with standard voice-over narration, including UN-style narration for on-camera testimonials or interviews. Productions using this technique play a few words of the original audio at regular volume in the beginning but quickly mute the original track (although it remains audible in the background) as the new foreign language is overlayed in the foreground.

On-Screen Text Replacement: Using this technique, we create new on-screen text for any language usually done with Photoshop or Illustrator.

A/V Production: We take care of all steps to create or produce your audio-visual program, and are able to provide audio as .WAV, .AVI, or MIDI files on DAT or a variety of video formats. From the typesetting of labels or packaging materials in foreign languages to the color standard conversion (PAL, SECAM) of videos, we coordinate and perform as much of the process as you want.

Transcription: We also offer transcription of cassette tapes, microcassette tapes, video footage, and multimedia programs in over 50 languages.