#NARRATION SCRIPT PROFESSIONAL#
#NARRATION SCRIPT TV#

Many spots feature legal content, like the disclaimers at the end of medical and pharmaceutical commercials. Legal spot content expands heavily – and can’t be shortened. But transcreated scripts – especially first and second drafts – are often too long to fit within spot time constraints, so make sure that they get a timing pass as well. And you’ll have much more leeway in terms of pace. You won’t need to line up the transcreated copy to existing visuals if they get re-created and re-flowed. Text expansion can affect transcreation as well, though in slightly different ways. Laid back and friendly, for example, won’t sound very laid back and friendly in your German dubbing production if the talent is reading at a faster pace just to get the copy to fit. And of course, localized scripts have to maintain that pace and rhythm.

#NARRATION SCRIPT TV#

Watch any high-quality brand spot or commercial – whether online pre-roll or broadcast TV – and you’ll see that the narration is tightly synchronized to picture, music and sound effects. Marketing copy relies on rhythm and pace to engage its audience. Performance is everything – and timing affects it dramatically. Script editing is critical to ensure that the scripts fit just right. A translated spot that’s 29.5 seconds or 30.5 seconds simply won’t work. If a radio spot is slated for 30 seconds, it has to be exactly that length. However, online pre-roll, radio and TV spots don’t get have the same leeway – in fact, they have no leeway at all. Likewise, timed audio often has some flexibility – for example, phone systems (IVR) may just require that the foreign-language audio expands no more than 15%. For example, corporate videos can be slowed down slightly during post-production to accommodate expanded scripts, or even re-edited for sections that are too long. There are several ways to tweak video and audio files to deal with text expansion.

Marketing spots have very strict time limits. The production and delivery requirements of marketing localization mean that script editing for timing is particularly critical to avoiding serious project issues.

Finally, those changes are reviewed by the client or in-country team.įor more information on this process, see our post What is Script Editing for Timing? Why Is It Critical for Dubbing? Why is it critical for radio, TV commercials & online marketing spots? He or she then shortens those sections, balancing accuracy with the timing requirements of each piece.

#NARRATION SCRIPT PROFESSIONAL#

This pass is done by a script timing editor, a native-speaker voice-over, dubbing and video localization professional who reviews the translated script against the source audio or video, identifying the sections that won’t fit, or that don’t synchronize to visuals. Thus, translated scripts have to be edited down so that they can be read within the time allowed by the English source. But timed voice-over and video projects restrict how long the foreign-language voice-over track can be. Translations are usually longer than their English source text – that’s just a part of the localization process. What is script editing for timing on voice-over & dubbing projects? This post lists the four reasons this service is critical to marketing voice-over, video localization and transcreation. Multimedia localization and marketing producers must understand script editing for timing to ensure the success of their multilingual spots. Why? Because the particulars of marketing localization mean that text expansion can seriously impact project budgets, timelines and quality. Script editing for timing is an essential part of all voice-over and dubbing video localization projects – but on radio, TV and online marketing spot productions it’s absolutely critical.

Narration script