German Voiceover and Dubbing

Word choice, phrasing, accents – humans process dozens of subtle cues when listening to another voice. To engage an audience, it’s not enough to be linguistically accurate; you have to be authentic. SPG’s German language specialists and voice talent deliver both. Our multi-step process includes both peer review and quality control to ensure your project is culturally relevant and immersive.

The result is high-quality localization, and it’s what SPG has done for over 30 years 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 German-speaking markets?

There are more than 130 million German speakers worldwide, spanning over 42 countries, making German the eleventh most spoken language globally. It is also the second most spoken language in Europe as the official, co-official, or regional language of twelve European countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Denmark, and France. In addition to the number of German speakers, Germany by itself has the fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP in the world, and the largest economy in Europe, making it an essential target market for businesses to reach.

Whether you are looking to dub, subtitle, or narrate, localizing into German gives you access not only to Germany and its German-speaking neighbors but also to its thriving expatriate community worldwide. International companies have enjoyed great success localizing their marketing and ad campaigns, videos, TV and radio spots, VOD (video on demand), e-learning materials, video games, and more into German.

Over the past 30+ years, SPG has provided localization services in German 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 Freunde (friends) in Germany! We work with a very large and diverse range of native German 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 German. Dubbing requires the added step of adapting the script to optimize the sync between our recorded German 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 German 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 German 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 German!

When text or narration is preferable to lip-sync voice dubbing, SPG offers subtitling, closed captioning, and audio description services. Our roster of German 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.