Chinese Voiceovers

Chinese is not one language, and the brief has to say which

"Chinese voice over" is the most under-specified request in this industry. There are two decisions hiding inside it, and getting either wrong makes the recording unusable.

The first is spoken language: Mandarin or Cantonese. They are not accents of one another; a Mandarin speaker does not understand Cantonese. Mandarin covers mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Cantonese covers Hong Kong, Macau, Guangdong and much of the older overseas Chinese diaspora.

The second is written script, which only affects on-screen text but affects it completely. Simplified characters for the mainland and Singapore, Traditional for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Mandarin has its own fork

Mainland Mandarin and Taiwan Mandarin differ in accent, intonation and a long list of everyday vocabulary, including much technology and business terminology. Taiwanese listeners identify a mainland read instantly, and the reverse holds. For a campaign covering both, that is two recordings.

• Mainland Mandarin, Beijing-standard, for the People's Republic and most international content
• Taiwan Mandarin, a separate casting pool with its own vocabulary and softer intonation
• Cantonese, for Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong
• Singaporean Mandarin, closer to mainland with local vocabulary

The opposite timing problem

Almost every language on this site expands against English. Chinese does the reverse: translated Chinese is typically 20 to 30 percent shorter, because characters carry more meaning per syllable.

That sounds like a gift and behaves like a problem. A script written to fill 30 seconds in English leaves the Chinese read finishing early, with silence where the picture still runs. The fix is not to pad, which sounds artificial, but to re-pace at translation stage and let the read breathe. It is a different craft from compression and worth flagging before the session.

Tone, and why a native check is not optional

Mandarin has four tones plus a neutral one; Cantonese has six. Pitch contour carries lexical meaning, so a tone delivered wrong is not an accent, it is a different word. Brand names and transliterated foreign terms are the recurring failure point, because there is often more than one accepted rendering and the wrong one sounds either foreign or faintly comic.

We settle brand-name pronunciation before the session and have a native speaker check the delivered audio.

Where Chinese voice over is used

• Commercial voice over for broadcast, online and connected TV
• Corporate voice over and elearning voice over
• Explainer voice over for product and technical video
• Animation voice over and video game voice over, a very large category
• Documentary voice over and audiobook voice over
• IVR voice over and telephone voice over
• Dubbing and subtitling

What you get

• The Mandarin or Cantonese decision settled, and mainland or Taiwan within Mandarin
• Custom demos from native voices in that variant, read to your script
• Brand-name and transliteration pronunciation agreed before the session
• Re-pacing where the translated script runs short against picture
• A native reviewer checking tones and delivery, plus Simplified or Traditional confirmed for any on-screen text

Send the script and tell us which market it is for. Demos and a fixed quote usually within 24 hours.