Arabic Voiceover and Dubbing

Your audience speaks Arabic, but in a region spanning 22 countries and 5 million square miles, how do you ensure that your content is culturally relevant and immersive for everyone?

The linguists at SPG Studios have spent over three decades creating localized content and studying how it is received. We understand that true engagement comes from authenticity. Of course the translation must be accurate, but specific word choices, phrasing, and accents influence perception and meaning.

Our Arabic language specialists understand the unique attributes of each of the five dialect “families” within the language as well as Modern Standard Arabic. They recognize the subtle distinctions between audiences in, for example, Egypt, Iraq and Morocco. And our multi-step production process includes both peer review and quality control to ensure those audiences are engaged.

The result is high-quality localization, and it’s what SPG has done for clients as diverse as film studios, gaming companies, universities, web content providers, Fortune 500 companies and the ad agencies that serve them.

Why should you localize your content for Arabic-speaking markets?

There are more than 466 million Arabic speakers worldwide, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world. Arabic is the official language of Algeria, Bahrain, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Arabic-speaking world has a collective $7.1 billion in annual GDP, 4th largest among global languages. The region is experiencing significant growth in business development, entertainment, real estate, construction, and technology and other sectors, making it an essential part of the communication strategy for private sector companies, NGOs, and others. According to Statistica, Arabic speakers represent the 4th largest community of Internet users.

Whether you are looking to dub, subtitle, or narrate, localizing into Arabic gives you access not only to the majority of the Middle Eastern and Northern Africa region, but also to a thriving expatriate community worldwide. International companies have enjoyed great success localizing their marketing and ad campaigns, training videos, TV and radio spots, VOD (video on demand), e-learning materials, video games, and more into Arabic.

SPG has provided localization services in a variety of Arabic dialects for feature films, TV and other episodic series, documentaries, video games, web content, commercials, TV and radio spots, e-learning and training videos. In the majority of cases, we’re asked to provide voice-overs, narrations, or dubs, which are sometimes referred to as video dubbing or audio translation. Sometimes clients also need us to prepare subtitles, translations, graphics localization, and other media services.

SPG has lots of friends (أصدقاء or asdiqa) in the Middle East and North Africa! We work with a large and diverse range of native Arabic-speaking voice artists, directors, localization experts, and recording and mixing engineers. Depending on the content type and project goals, we can employ:

• “UN style” voice-over, which plays “on top of” the original dialog
• Narration that replaces the original, or
• Lip-sync dubbing, which synchronizes to lip movements and reflects the tone and emotional quality of the original speaker

All three styles require linguists to translate the as-recorded script to bring every nuance of your source material into Arabic. Dubbing requires the added step of adapting the script to optimize the sync between our recorded Arabic audio and the original visuals. SPG’s best-in-class adapters scrutinize each word and phrase to ensure the dubbed performance conveys the exact “feel” of the original.

For many clients, the most crucial step in the process is casting Arabic voices. SPG can manage the entire process, or present you with filtered or unfiltered lists of voice samples. We can offer a near-limitless variety of ages, styles, tonal quality, and performance capabilities. SPG has dubbed children singing, aliens speaking a made-up language, and everything in between!

Other critical steps in the process include:

• Pairing Arabic voice talent with session directors and talented recording engineers
• Editing, mixing, and post-production services that ensure the audio quality sounds perfect
• File transfer, digital asset management, efficient workflow tools, and secure digital rights management

After recording is complete, we turn our attention to the graphics localization of onscreen text, titles/credits, “lower thirds”, and other written material. To fully immerse your audience, all relevant text should be in Arabic!

When text or narration is preferable to lip-sync voice dubbing, SPG offers subtitling, closed captioning, and audio description services. Our roster of Arabic translators, linguists, adapters, and editors have extensive experience creating subtitles and closed captions in a timely and cost-effective manner. We also employ audio description specialists with thousands of hours of experience delivering information to the sight-impaired community.