Adelphi provides book translation and localisation into over 100 languages for publishing companies and authors.
Amongst these, we have typeset books of various subject matters from historical to religious. We can provide the translations or work with your own. Adelphi has typeset documents in over 100 languages and has built up expertise in using InDesign, QuarkXpress, FrameMaker, Illustrator and all Microsoft applications. When typesetting some languages it is important to know which font works for that particular language in a particular design package. By using Adelphi for your translation and typesetting we will ensure that the correct font is used to avoid any problems at the typesetting stage.
The sample above is of a book we typeset in Sinhala and was called ‘The Man-Eater of Punanai’ by Christopher Ondaatje. This is the story of a small village in Ceylon where the locals were terrorised by a man-eating leopard.
All our Urdu typesetting is handled in-house and carried out by our own experienced typesetters. As well as books we produce all kinds of Urdu printed materials including corporate brochures, packaging, business cards, posters and manuals.
The above is a sample from a recently typeset religious book in Greek for an American publishing company.
Adelphi has been localising printed materials for over 20 years here is some advice on the do’s and don’ts when making the English version.
Often, we find that designers are not aware that their work will be localised further down the line, and even if they do, do not necessarily know how to adapt their work to make the process easier later on. Below are some examples of the most frequent mistakes we encounter. Avoiding these can save you a lot of money and can ensure that your work is completed in the quickest possible fashion with the minimum of fuss.
Some designs simply fill the page with text, leaving no room for text expansion. Most languages (with some notable exceptions) run longer than English and some of them run much longer. This causes the localised versions to have to make some sort of compromise: either text becomes smaller or a condensed font is used, or some material is completely cut out for brevity. Neither scenario is ideal, so it is much better to consider this aspect of the task at the design stage.
Overuse of text formatting featureslikecolouredtext, bold text and italic text etc. can slow down the localisation process, as the formatting needs to be applied to the precise word or phrase in translation that is equivalent to the English. Sometimes, this does not work at all if the target language has a dramatically different word order.
Embedded, non-editable text in images require extra attentionor can be impossible to edit, and can slow things down dramatically, especially when over the main part of the image. Where possible, the text should be made available for editing in InDesign. If not, we will require all of the PSD files to work with.
Avoid designing paragraphs or “word clouds” with mixed font sizes that look good in English but have no chance of being replicated in the target language: quite often they do not have the same impact when localised and can often be “lost in translation”. Furthermore, due to word order difference, key words in English at the beginning of a sentence might end up in the middle or at the end of the sentence when translated.
One of the most frequent issues we encounter is incorrect and inconsistent usage of style sheets, in particular where one style has been used but in some instances bold text, italics or even different fonts have been changed manually. This can cause the most significant delays of all, and is the biggest source of small typos we encounter during internal QA.
Sending the artwork to be typeset BEFORE it is signed off by the client is never a good idea, and neither are new design changes after we have already started the work. We can do nothing in situations like these where significant changes are requested mid-project but start again and present new figures for the work, delaying work and incurring further costs for the client.
Localisation from English to right to left languages
These include languages such as Arabic, Urdu, Hebrew, Dari, Farsi, Kurdish and Pashto.
Right-to-left languages require that the documents have their alignment flipped. This takes longer the more complicated the design. We recently had an English design that the designer went to town with angles, images with 45 degree angled sides, text boxes with 45 degree angles. It was obvious they had no idea that it was to be localised into Arabic because when flipped all the angles were reversed, that’s ok if the image is large enough to accommodate this but in 90% of cases this does not happen. Therefore it took us twice as long to set this document as normal costing the client twice as much.
Right to left languages also do not have uppercase, this is a problem we often come across as the English has uppercase sentences or uppercase words for effect. With Vidal Sassoon we agreed that where the English had uppercase we would substitute a bold font. Not quite the same but it gave emphasis where required.
Traditional (Cantonese) and Simplified (Mandarin) Chinese
Both Mandarin and Cantonese refer to spoken languages whereas Traditional and Simplified donates the writing systems. Mandarin is the official language in mainland China and Cantonese is used in Hong Kong, Macau and the province Guangdong.
Chinese is one of the few languages which takes up less space when translated from English. Both Traditional Chinese (Cantonese) and Simplified Chinese (Mandarin) DTP therefore requires an understanding of the layout of Chinese and the ability to modify the design of the document to avoid large spaces and unsightly gaps in the translated Chinese document.
Chinese fonts
Legally to print your materials for use in the PRC you must be using fonts that are licensed for use in the PRC, otherwise you will be breaking the licensing agreement of the font manufacture. Adelphi has over 100 fully licensed fonts for use in the PRC. To see a list of our Chinese fonts please click here
Font problems It is very important that the diacritics are correctly lined up otherwise the word meaning can change. The correct font must be used to display the diacritics in the right position.
Correct Thai
Incorrect Thai
Care has to be taken with some Hindi fonts, as occasionally they are not all mapped to the same keyboard layout, this means that some Hindi fonts cannot be swapped with another Hindi font, as some characters will corrupt. This means that the translator must use a standard professional font that can be used in the typesetting application, also some Hindi fonts do not have bold or italic options.
Line spacing in languages such as Burmese when the text has much taller characters than Latin text, because of this Burmese and other languages such as Cambodian, Hindi etc., often requires more vertical space between lines.
Text expansion can be a problem
For Instance in German typesetting text expansion can often be an issue. There are often very long compound words in German, which can create problems. This can produce untidy line-breaks when placed in narrow columns and so being able to hyphenate the text in the correct place is important.
Julian, unser Auszubildener,
kam zu uns während eines
Studienpraktikums,
so hat er es sehr schnell
begriffen.
In some German compound words, the first word serves to describe the second word in more precise detail, for instance die Zeitungsindustrie (the newspaper industry.)
They even have awards for the longest German word of the year! In 1999 the winner was: Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz. The monster word consisted of 63 letters, 20 syllables, and ten individual words—all to express a law having to do with British beef (Rindfleisch) and the so-called “mad cow disease.”
Data required
We need the English original data for us to adapt it into a foreign language this is usually supplied by the design agency as a “collect or package” which includes all images, fonts and links (images) to the document. Without these we cannot create a print ready PDF as the deliverable.
Many companies now host their videos on YouTube and add subtitles by uploading a translated SRT file. This is a very cost effective way of having your videos subtitled. There are limitations as you do not have control of font or position etc.
Here is how it’s done:
How to upload subtitles and closed captions
Visit your Video Manager and click the drop-down menu next to the “Edit” button for the video you’d like to upload subtitles or closed captions for
Select Subtitles and CC
Select the original spoken language of the video from the drop-down menu (157 languages)
Click the Add subtitles or cc button and select the language of the subtitle or caption file you want to upload
Select Upload a file (Details below)
Choose the language at the top of the screen
Choose the type of file to upload
Click the Choose file button and browse your computer for the file
The file will auto-populate and let you know the timing of each subtitle or closed caption
you can turn the subtitles on by clicking the captions icon at the bottom of the video. Depending on your location, the captions icon will look like one of the following: or
Adelphi Studio is a leading foreign language voice-over agency and subtitling company working with media companies in the UK, the USA, and worldwide. Our in-house dedicated audio visual translation department provide a quality subtitling and voice-over translation service. We also provide typesetting in over 120 languages.
Adelphi has worked for advertising and design agencies from all over the world localising their print materials, creating subtitles and dynamic on-screen text for video as well as recording and publishing voice-overs
Having material localized can often present a learning curve for design and advertising agencies. Often, we find that designers are not aware that their work will be localised further down the line, and even if they do, do not necessarily know how to adapt their work to make the process easier later on. Below are some examples of the most frequent mistakes we encounter. Avoiding these can save you a lot of money and can ensure that your work is completed in the quickest possible fashion with the minimum of fuss.
Printed Materials
Some designs simply fill the page with text, leaving no room for text expansion. Most languages (with some notable exceptions) run longer than English and some of them run much longer. This causes the localised versions to have to make some sort of compromise: either text becomes smaller or a condensed font is used, or some material is completely cut out for brevity. Neither scenario is ideal, so it is much better to consider this aspect of the task at the design stage.
Overuse of text formatting features like coloured text, bold text and italic text etc. can slow down the localisation process, as the formatting needs to be applied to the precise word or phrase in translation that is equivalent to the English. Sometimes, this does not work at all if the target language has a dramatically different word order.
Embedded, non-editable text in images require extra attention, and can slow things down dramatically, especially when over the main part of the image. Where possible, the text should be made available for editing in InDesign. If not, we will require all of the PSD files to work with.
Avoid designing paragraphs or “word clouds” with mixed font sizes that look good in English but have no chance of being replicated in the target language: quite often they do not have the same impact when localised and can often be “lost in translation”. Furthermore, due to word order difference, key words in English at the beginning of a sentence might end up in the middle or at the end of the sentence when translated.
One of the most frequent issues we encounter is incorrect and inconsistent usage of style sheets, in particular where one style has been used but in some instances bold text, italics or even different fonts have been changed manually. This can cause the most significant delays of all, and is the biggest source of small typos we encounter during internal QA.
Sending the artwork to be typeset BEFORE it is signed off by the client is never a good idea, and neither are new design changes after we have already started the work. We can do nothing in situations like these where significant changes are requested mid-project but start again and present new figures for the work, delaying work and incurring further costs for the client.
Arabic or other right-to-left languages require that documents have their alignment flipped. This takes longer the more complicated the design. To see more typesetting samples go here
Subtitling
The most usual problem we find when subtitling a video is that the original film has been edited precisely to match the English. This causes the same problem as explained above with typesetting: the translation runs longer than the original English and the resulting text either does not fit the same time slot or is too long to be read at a comfortable pace. We can improve the situation with tweaks after we have finished the work, but it is always better to take expansion of text due to translation into account and add more pauses in the original video.
We see another common issue particularly in animated or explanatory videos: important graphics are placed in the area where subtitles would normally be run (mid-bottom region of the screen) where they can end up being obscured. In the past we have been able to work around this issue by slightly scaling down the video and adding a border around the video while keeping the resolution of the video the same: this allows us to add the subtitles without interfering with any important graphics. To see more subtitling samples go here
Voice-overs
As with subtitling, timing is often an issue here if it turns out that no allowance has been made for languages that are longer than the original English. If we are then asked to sync the voice-over to the video, the timeslots given are insufficient as they stem from the timing of the English and don’t take into account natural text expansion due to translation. Therefore, where possible, it is best to add a few seconds of space before and after each portion of script. This allows our voice artists to be able to deliver their lines as faithfully to the original as possible without being rushed to fit into a specific time slot. This does depend on the language and some languages are shorter than English when spoken. It’s best to ask us in advance, letting us know the languages you require so we can advise the best method for that language.
Another issue that we have encountered in the past is the backing music or score to a video. Sometimes clients like to turn down the volume during speech and then turn it back up afterwards. We occasionally see this in marketing videos, where the sound mixer will lower the volume of the music when someone on-screen is talking. This is a great dynamic effect for the original version but for voice-over it can cause problems: the artist may need to rush the delivery of each line in order to finish it before the volume on the original video turns back up. If your video has this feature then we can replicate it in our localised version, but we would need to receive the background music on its own with no volume tweaks, so that we can adjust it ourselves. To hear our voice artists samples in over 75 languages go here
To Translate or Not to Translate
In many cases company names, product names etc. remain in English, but sometimes these terms have already been localised into the language required, or have an agreed foreign pronunciation for voice-over. We need to be told about these, though often we do our research before recording to see if there are indeed any such pre-existing localisations. If you have had material translated before, no matter what it is, it may help us get the translation just right.
In short, asking Adelphi before you design or start filming can save you time and money. No matter what your project is, if it is going to be localised into foreign languages just let us know and we can advise you.
Our in-house typesetting department has been typesetting foreign language materials in over 120 languages for over 20 years. With clients like Disney, Jaguar Land Rover, Vidal Sassoon and hundreds of advertising and design companies worldwide. All our typesetting is carried out in-house and includes proofing. We also produce eBooks too.
Adelphi has been producing foreign language typesetting for over 20 years, in fact, it’s how Adelphi got started, adding voice-overs, subtitling and our other services later as we looked to offer more localization services for our clients. Up to now, our typesetting services have been on a standalone website but we thought it would be better to offer these services through Adelphi Studio. We have many samples to look at and if we can help in any way please get in touch.
Graphics localization
We can also localize any graphics in the document using Photoshop or Illustrator, depending on the image we could require the original layered data with live text, not outlined text. We have the latest Adobe CC applications.
Data required
We need the English original data for us to adapt into your chosen languages using InDesign, QuarkXPress and other professional typesetting software, this is usually supplied by the design agency as a “collect or package” which includes all images, fonts and links (images) to the document. Without these, we cannot create a print-ready PDF as the deliverable.
Deliverable data
We can supply the finished document as a print-ready PDF set to your specifications, if required we can also outline the text in InDesign so you can print from the InDesign file itself.
Get the most out of your typesetting localization project
Many languages will expand once translated from English, so we’d recommend you leave some space for this. If in doubt, just give us a call and we’ll be happy to help.
Your style can be central to your project, but sometimes simple really is best. Bold, italics and even colors in the same paragraph can sometimes just not translate into your chosen language. By avoiding this you can also keep your costs down and speed up delivery.
Drop caps and uppercase for emphasis can look great in English, but some languages don’t use them. This is where our company’s typesetting experience can help you.
If you want to place text over an image, try to add it within the document rather than in the image itself. That way we can edit exactly what you need changing.
As an experienced typesetting agency, we know our fonts and some languages have more restrictions than English. Our staff can show you which fonts work in whichever language you desire, right down to the different weights and condensed versions.
Adelphi offices
Adelphi Studio offers subtitling and voice over services globally from our offices in the UK and the USA.
All US, Canadian, and South American inquiries should be directed to our US office while all other inquiries should go to our UK office.
For voice-artists who work with their voices every day, maintaining it well is essential. As a voice-over artist you need to ensure that you provide your clients with a reliable service, as well as keeping yourself comfortable!
There are many techniques thrown out there, claiming to be the best way to look after your voice, and in this blog we will look at some of these, and talk about ways to improve your vocal control.
Warming Up Routine For Voice Artists
Your vocal cords (or vocal folds) are found in the larynx, and just like an athlete wouldn’t do a serious work out with first warming up, voice over artists should first ‘stretch’ the muscles found within your voice box.
Starting with humming is a nice way to begin to relax these muscles in your larynx, as well as creating a nice resonant sound. If you work through syllables such as the ‘velar nasal’ gn sound found in onion, stretching it out, sliding up and down in pitch. Working with arpeggios, scales or glides that both climb and descend in pitch is a good way of ensuring you warm up in all parts of the range quickly and without strain. Next up, lip and tongue trills help to loosen the throat, jaw, tongue and lips, spread the vocal folds so that they vibrate mainly at their edges, and encourage relaxation.
Articulation is key in voice overs, to ensure that the words of the script are formed properly so you get the clearest read possible. Tongue twisters are a great way to help your annunciation and articulation, and they can also assist with the development of tongue muscle memory for particular vowel sounds. Here are a few examples:
1. Assists with R and L vowels
Red letter, yellow letter, red letter, yellow letter, red letter, yellow letter
2. Assists with moving from the front of the lips to the soft palate and back again.
A proper cup of coffee from a proper copper coffee pot.
3. Makes you move your lips from an Ooh shape to a flatter A shape and really get your mouth moving
Wayde went to Wales to watch wrens riot
4. This one is for forward tongue placement
I am not a pheasant plucker,
I’m a pheasant plucker’s son
but I’ll be plucking pheasants
When the pheasant plucker’s gone
5. This exercise works the soft palate and back of the mouth
Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks
Finally, yawning helps you naturally relax your jaw, extends your soft palate and regulates the oxygen flowing through your body. A ‘yawn-sigh’ helps you work on your range, sliding all the way down from the top of your vocal range to the lowest grumble you can reach. You’ll know when you reach your limit! Make sure you do this last, and only do this a few times per warm up… you don’t want to strain your muscles too much!
European Spanish, sometimes known as Castellano, and Latin American Spanish can be understood by Spanish speakers all over the world, however there are many differences between the two, both in phonology and vocabulary. When choosing foreign language voice artists, it is important to select talents who speak the right variation for your audience.
A very clear distinction between European and Latin American Spanish is the pronunciation of the letter C, when followed by an I or an E, and the letter Z when followed by a vowel. In Spain, the letter C is pronounced as /θ/, or the ‘th’ sound in English. However in Latin American this is pronounced as a ’S’ sound. One of the most popular urban myths which claims to give reason for this differentiation, is that there was once a Spanish king who spoke with lisp, which was then imitated by the Spanish population.
The way in which the second person plural is conjugated can be a good indiction of whether someone is speaking European or Latin American Spanish. Speakers of Latin American Spanish will always use ustedes no matter who they are speaking to. However speakers of European Spanish will use ustedes only when addressing a group of people who are perhaps older or more important than them. For everyone else, they will use vosotros. In a similar vein, it is common in Latin American to hear the word ‘you’ as vos, whereas in Spain this would be tú.
As well as this, in many places in Latin America you will notice the ’s’ sound sometimes goes missing or is ‘swallowed’. For example the word está can become eh’tá. This feature of speech is actually also common in the southern parts of Spain.
Spanish Voice-Overs, Translations, Subtitles, and Localisation
Communication between speakers of the two is usually always fluid and much like communication between the speakers of UK and US English who may use different vocabulary and have different accents, but have no trouble understanding each other. However in terms of voice-overs, translations, subtitles and localisation, it is important to identify which market you want to speak to and then use resources from this area. If you want to hear the differences yourself, take a look at our European and Latin American voice-over catalogue!
Computer-guided translation tools have come up with some baffling translations across the world, but now Korean authorities are tackling the problem head on the Korea Times reports.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in Korea are cracking down on these mistranslations of Korean restaurant menus into English that have begun to embarrass some Koreans.
A task force including the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has been created to tackle the issue, with the help of the National Institute of Korean Language, the Korean Food Foundation, food experts and native English, Chinese and Japanese speakers to standardise the foreign names of Korean foods, and a new website will be launched with the new translations to minimise further errors.
This issue is not just with English translations. Rep. Yeom Dong-yeol of the Saenuri Party revealed late last year that among 274 restaurants in Seoul with Korean-food menus in Chinese, a third had “seriously wrong” translations.
Some of these errors include ‘Pollock Stew’ being translated to ‘Dynamic Stew’, ‘Beef Tartare’ becoming ‘Six Times’.
Our Translations and Voice-Over Translation Service
Here at Adelphi, as a leading translation, subtitling and voice-over agency, we ensure that our translations are fully accurate and that we only work with professionals translating into their mother tongue. We are a member of the Association of Translation Companies (ATC), who require member companies to adhere to a strict code of professional conduct, are subject to the rulings of a professional ethics committee and carry full professional indemnity insurance cover to safeguard the interests of the translation purchaser. All our translators are members of either the Institute of Linguists or the Institute of Translations & Interpreters with a minimum of three years experience to ensure your voice-over translation is done to the highest professional standard.
Adelphi is a professional audiovisual translation company specializingin the translation of audiovisual materials including transcriptions and translations in over 120 languages. We also have our own in-house voice-over and subtitling studio offering a complete audiovisual translation service. Many localization companies will farm out their translations whereas at Adelphi we handle all our own with an experienced team of translation project managers.
We have over 1,200foreign language voice artists on our books in over 75 languages we also have our own in-house editing facilities, audio engineers and subtitling technicians.
Adelphi is an Audiovisual translation agency that aims to provide a full localization service to our customers.
Our Audio Visual language services include:
Audiovisual Translations
Audiovisual Subtitle Translations
Audiovisual Voice-over Translations
Audiovisual Transcriptions
Audiovisual Voiceovers and Voice Artists
Audiovisual Subtitling
Audiovisual On-screen text Localization
Audiovisual Motion Graphics Localization
Audiovisual Graphics Localization
Working in cooperation with Translation Agencies
Even though we are a full-service translation agency we often provide other translation agencies with audiovisual translations and video localization and are also happy to work with their own translations. Although we often have to give advice on the length of translations, fonts for subtitling etc as many translation agencies do not understand the difference between standard translations and audiovisual translations. This enables these translation agencies to offer video translations including the voice-over and subtitling to their own clients.
With offices in the UK, the USA, contact Adelphi in the US on 916 414 8714, email us@adelphistudio.com or our UK office on +44 (0)114 272 3772, or email sales@adelphistudio.com
Subtitling translations
Arabic Chinese Lao
French Russian Spanish
Finnish Subtitling
Portuguese Subtitling
Norwegian Subtitling
This Norwegian subtitling sample is taken from a project we translated and subtitled from English to Norwegian. For more information on our Norwegian subtitling and translation services visit www.adelphistudio.com or call +44 (0)114 272 3772
http://adelphistudio.com/norwegian-subtitling-services/
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
English Subtitling
English subtitling services. Adelphi produce professional English subtitles, plus subtitling in over 60 other languages. For you next English subtitling project please contact Adelphi on +(44) 0114 272 3772 or visit : http://adelphistudio.com/english-subtitling-services/
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
Tamil Subtitling
Adelphi Studio's Tamil voice-over, translation & recording services, here you can listen to some examples of our Tamil voice-over artists and see a small example of our Tamil subtitling services. For more information visit : http://adelphistudio.com/tamil-voice-over-services/ or http://adelphistudio.com/tamil-subtitling-services/ or call +44 (0)114 272 3772
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
Adelphi produces SRT files in any language, including making transcriptions of the source video before they are translated to create SRT files for subtitling. Some clients want only the SRT file so that they can produce their own subtitles while others want us to provide the finished video for them.
Voice-over translations
These are a more specialist area when compared to standard translations. Voice-over translations must be restricted to fit the same time-slot as the original otherwise the voice-artist may have to speak faster to make it fit. If the voice-over is going to be used over a video of a different language, then the voice-over translation may include time-codes to help the voice-artist and engineer sync up the voice to the video.
Best Western video voiced into 18 languages
BW Rewards Japanese
We provided the Japanese Voice Over for this Best Western Rewards promotional video. The voice over was provided by Yoshi.
For more information, please contact our UK or US office or please visit : http://adelphistudio.com/japanese-voice-over-services/
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
BW Rewards Russian
We provided the Russian Voice Over for this Best Western Rewards promotional video. The voice over was provided by Alexey.
For more information, please contact our UK or US office or please visit : http://adelphistudio.com/russian-voice-over-services/
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
BW Rewards Spanish
We provided the Spanish Voice Over for this Best Western Rewards promotional video.
For more information, please contact our UK or US office or please visit : http://adelphistudio.com/spanish-voice-over-services/
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
BW Rewards Norwegian
We provided the Norwegian Voice Over for this Best Western Rewards promotional video. The voice over was provided by Trond.
For more information, please contact our UK or US office or please visit : http://adelphistudio.com/norwegian-voice-over-services/
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
BW Rewards Dutch
We provided the Dutch Voice Over for this Best Western Rewards promotional video. The voice over was provided by Paul S.
For more information, please contact our UK or US office or please visit : http://adelphistudio.com/dutch-voice-over-services/
email: (UK) sales@adelphistudio.com (USA) : us@adelphistudio.com
German
Over 1,200 foreign language voice artists on our books in over 75 languages.
From Arabic to Yoruba we have the voice artists to suit your production and budget. With more voice samples to choose from than other agencies offering a great range of voice-over artists to suit your project. We also have a great selection of English accented voice artists to choose from.
On-screen text localization is required when making either subtitles or voice-overs in a language other than the original on the video. There are many instances of text appearing on videos, some of these are part of the editing package and these can be changed by a trained engineer, however, some on-screen text is placed as graphics or part of the actual footage. Depending on the complexity and how the original text was produced we may require the data package it was made in.
or 
A task force including the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has been created to tackle the issue, with the help of the National Institute of Korean Language, the Korean Food Foundation, food experts and native English, Chinese and Japanese speakers to standardise the foreign names of Korean foods, and a new website will be launched with the new translations to minimise further errors.
