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Brazilian Portuguese Dubbing of ESL Course for Kids
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In this project for Just Right Reader, Amanda was chosen to perform the role of an African-descendant teacher who originally speaks English and teaches English phonemes and sounds to children in native American English.
Check a summary of her journey from recording a sample to delivering top-quality 350 dubbed audio files in sync:
However, because it is a project of localization and dubbing:
- the instructions and general content must be translated and read in native Brazilian Portuguese...
- on the other hand, the words, letters, phonemes, and sounds should be mimicked by the Brazilian Portuguese voice-over talent with an American English accent to sound exactly how the children are supposed to learn the language: just like the original, in native American English, not in PTBR. Otherwise, the children would be learning the Brazilian Portuguese oral language, not the American English oral language.
1. Voiceover Audition
It all started with a personalized voiceover sample in a global-wide audition call...
Amanda was contacted by a lovely voiceover & dubbing agency - with who she loves to work - to record a sample of the video. It's a big voiceover pool of talents and they give priority to Amanda whenever they need anything related to BRPT, Latin American English, International English, Dubbing projects, and conversational, real-person Brazilian voice.
2. Challenges of Dubbing in PTBR & English
Already in the auditioning stage, she was aware of the level of difficulty in performing this style of dubbing. Not only lip-sync in Brazilian Portugese was needed but also mimicking, ADR, and mirroring the original instructions on how to reproduce sounds, words, and letters in native American English.
Tone of Voice and Voiceover Role
When she received the invitation, she was confident to be a fit due to her abilities and skills to deliver a precise lip sync, under self-directed sessions, with the broadcasting quality of her voiceover home studio and with a tone of voice that matches the original speaker:
- gender: woman
- ethnicity: black
- age: 30 to 40
- role: language teacher of children from 4 to 14 years old
- tone: warm, moderately engaged, explaining, articulated, happy, motivating
- timbre: contralto, with vocal range but steady dynamic and volume
Because Amanda has a wide vocal range and a full, warm natural voice, the dubbing version fits well with the video, with the speaker teaching the mouth and tongue movements towards the camera.
Having finished the audition production, Amanda sent it to the agency and life went on.
4. Other Voiceover Agencies
Then, something frustrating happened.
Amanda started receiving multiple invitations from other voiceover companies, agents, and agencies for the same project, with lower compensation and sometimes similar descriptions - or worse - contrasting instructions compared with the original invitation she received.
Many things could have happened:
- Didn't the client like her sample/audition?
- Is she competing with multiple other offers with lower rates?
- Is this potential project widely spread and open for quotes and samples from several agencies and freelance voice artists around the globe?
- Did the small casting call from the first agency leak and it gave room to predatory competition from voiceover agents, VO casting websites, and other agencies to try to provide voiceover services to the stolen customer or even for the first agency on behalf of Amanda?
Possibly.
However, a professional remains confident in their unique abilities and calm in the midst of despair, aggression, and abuse. Amanda did not send another audition, and time went by.
5. Choosing the best voice actor & voiceover agency
And guess what?
After months of waiting, the agency that first contacted her won the big project in multiple languages and shared the news that Amanda would be dubbing not only Terri, the teacher, but also all the other characters in the course: Starla & Tubbie.
- Starla sounded like a sweet little girl of 5-7 years old.
- Tubbie sounded like a teenager of 12-14 years old.
6. Multi-language Dubbing & Localization Project
Here are some technical details of the project:
- Final Client: Just Right Reader
- Intermediate Agency: undisclosed
- Scope and Deliverables: +350 videos (+600 minutes of dubbing)
- Usage: final voiceover product; course behind a paywall and in open product samples.
- Genre: Educational, English as Second Language Course
- Techniques & Abilities: lip-sync, ADR, dubbing, synchronization, mimicking, mirroring, bilingual female voice talent, warm tone of voice, compelling tone of voice, dubbing QA.
- Artistic Direction: She was given freedom all the time, with minimal direction. First, because the original was the reference. Second, the agency trusted Amanda's commitment to excellence.
- Recording: The dubbing was recorded in self-directed sessions - without the client being online during the voiceover recording. The whole process, from correcting errors in the script and recording, to editing, revision, and submitting was done solely by Amanda and was under her high control of quality.
- Studio: Recorded in Amanda's Home-Studio, with a Neumann TLM103 - which is rare among dubbing artists.
Voiceover Curiosities
- Speaking 2 languages at the same time:
When I started the project and began to record the first set of videos, it was a bit tongue-rolling to speak 2 languages in the same phrase, alternating native BRPT to native American EN and vice versa. A few times, I pronounced the letters' names in Portuguese when I was supposed to pronounce them in English.
However, after the first videos, I incorporated the role and it became natural to flawlessly switch between languages/accents.
- +350 repetitions of the same phrases:
Almost all the videos began and ended with the same intro and outro phrases: "Hi there, my name is Terri, and I am a teacher..." "Hi friends, my name is Terri. I am a teacher..."
or (this one was in ALL videos): "...Remember to read, reread, and keep reading to become a stronger, more confident reader".
I lost track of how many times I said those phrases in the last 2 months! I was excelling at mastering those intro and outro phrases... On the other hand, I couldn't let them sound boring and repetitive from one video to another so I need to be careful everytime I was going to read these phrases - it should always sound fresh, authentic and different from the other videos.
For this, I looked for variety, nuances, and different inflections in these fixed lines.
These phrases will be some of those remarkable lines from my VO career that I'll never forget and that I'll recall the memories immediately only by remembering the first words! [laughs]