Indonesian Voiceover and Dubbing

To connect with these listeners and viewers, you need more than a translation app or dictionary – you need cultural authenticity.

The linguists at SPG Studios are acutely aware of how word choice, phrasing, and accents influence perception and meaning. Our Bahasa specialists and voice talent deliver that nuance and context. For example, knowing that most Indonesians speak Bahasa in addition to an indigenous local language influences how one conveys specific ideas. Moreover, their work passes through both peer review and quality control to ensure the finished product 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 Indonesian-speaking markets?

There are more than 200 million people who speak Indonesian as their primary or secondary language. It is the official language of Indonesia, which is the 4th most populous nation in the world. According to the International Monetary Fund, Indonesia has the 15th largest economy in the world, and published reports forecast that its Internet economy will grow to $130 billion by 2025. Indonesian speakers represent the 5th largest community of Internet users, according to Statistica.

Whether you are looking to dub, subtitle, or narrate, localizing into Indonesian gives you access not only to the largest markets within Indonesia, 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 Bahasa.

SPG has provided localization services in Indonesian 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 (teman-teman) in Indonesia! We work with a large and diverse range of native Bahasa-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 Indonesian. Dubbing requires the added step of adapting the script to optimize the sync between our recorded Indonesian 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 Indonesian 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 Bahasa 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 Indonesian!

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