Deafcat Studios – DeafCat Studios

Modern Standard Arabic is Key to Reach a Global Arabic Audience

Deafcat Studios — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 13:05:37 +0000

Modern Standard Arabic dubbing in the Middle East

Arabic dubbing in the Middle East started with the late Nicolas Abou Samah, a celebrated Lebanese film director when he established his company FILMALI in Leabnon. His initiative sparked the industry in the Middle East given the importance of Arabic localization, as the significance of Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic specifically) cannot be underestimated in the modern world. It is the official language of over 20 countries and there are about 300 million speakers of Arabic across the world. As so, this is a huge potential in the global market growth.

Modern Standard Worldwide

The Arab world exhibits an immense opportunity for media, entertainment and many other different industries to expand their global reach. Nevertheless, Arabic localization is a particularly tricky task due to its complexities and dialects. Many brands chose to localize in Standard Arabic, from those we mention Netflix and Amazon and many other; this seems to be a wise choice since it’s the official language used in most all Arab countries. By definition, this choice escalated the global reach of these brands. However, and as mentioned before, Arabic is a complex language with many different dialects, which will directly affect the pronunciation when opting to localize in Modern Standard Arabic.

Lebanon & Egypt using Modern Standard

In terms of volume, there is no doubt that Lebanon and Egypt are the two biggest localization hubs in the Arab region. However, there are some major concerns that should be addressed when deciding which pool of talents to choose from and the reason in mainly due to the local accents. The Levantines (people living in Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon) have almost non-existent local accent when speaking Modern Standard Arabic; consequently they have a better pronunciation then other Arab speakers. Whereas Egyptians, have a predominant local accent that remains present when speaking Modern Standard Arabic. Comparing the two accents is rather simple. Lets take the letter G as an example. In Modern standard Arabic, it is pronounced “Jee” as in Jar, but Egyptians pronounce it “Gee” as in Galaxy, which is wrong. Consequently, the increase in demands for Modern Standard Arabic localization in Lebanon prove to be reasonable when intending to maximize the reach across the Arab world. With all eyes on the MENA region, it is becoming the future ahead. The market is booming which is pushing international brands to seek every way and opportunity to connect with the market’s demands, and language is a key factor to attain this connection. DeafCat Studios

Arabic Localization, How it All Started!

Deafcat Studios — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 11:27:58 +0000

History of Arabic Localization

Through history, both human communication and the evolution of Arabic Localization using expression and dialogue were regarded as the main trigger for the elevation of human civilization. The use of writing through newspapers followed by photography, enabled communication to shift beyond. Reaching the 20th century, which was the dawn of media after the invasion of radio and film (TV) where people had the chance to see what others across the world looked like. Both, considered the most powerful aids of communication, source of information and entertainment. They made their way into homes becoming immensely a major component in everyone’s daily life routine. With a late, came the Internet, the latest assertive of all mass media linking the globe.

Globalization vs Arabic Localization

In today’s world of globalization, and with the expansion of broadcasting audiovisual sector. People are on daily basis coming in contact with films, TV programs, music and video games, many of which originated in foreign countries and with different languages. To make this contact possible and efficient, screen translations were used. Later on, came dubbing, one of the screen or audiovisual forms of translation, which involves the replacement of the original speech by a voice track. It attempts to follow as closely as possible the timing, phrasing and lip movement of the original dialogue. This became the upcoming trend. Pushing thus, translation, adaptation and localization in the US and Europe to their highest apex for the good of global interaction.

The Ages of Localization

Meanwhile, in the late 70s, the Middle East, distant from localizing foreign content, came Nicolas Abu Samah, a renowned Lebanese film director, introducing “Arabic dubbing” and establishing his own company FILMALI in Lebanon to eventually become the first entity of the region that kick-started the industry of dubbing in Arabic to the Arab world. Hence, and for the past four decades, FILMALI, followed by DeafCat Studios, a company established in 2006 due to the expansion of services offered. Hence, fully determined to provide consistently the highest quality of localized productions and services. Deafcat Studios, specialized in Arabic VO recording, Arabic translations, dubbing into Arabic, Arabic voice over, music production, 2.0 and 5.1 mixing as well as mastering. More recently, a boom of the video game industry, DeafCat Studios positioned itself to be one of the top companies to offer Arabic video game localization services to the biggest developers in the world.

360° Video Production in Dubai and Beirut

Deafcat Studios — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 13:16:08 +0000

Video Production

Yes it is finally here! We are proud to announce that DeafCat Studios now have the capacity and resources to produce 360° Video Production and cater to both the Lebanese and UAE markets. Now brands, publishers and advertisers in Beirut and Dubai can produce 360° videos quickly and affordably. F&B, retail, real-estate, event organization, travel and tourism industries can now showcase their businesses in a fantastic new way. These 360° Video Production are guaranteed to capture your audiences and increase your brand equity.
One of the most powerful content formats ever created, 360 has been at the beating heart of visualize since day one.
360° video is one of the most powerful content formats for user engagement. It transports viewers to the center of a narrative, giving them a highly immersive experience of a real-world or custom environment. With major platforms like YouTube and Facebook supporting the format, your 360° content has the potential to reach millions.
Interactive video is currently seeing wide adoption on campaigns from international brands, music videos, TV and entertainment, sports, corporate training, the travel industry and more. With the lowest barrier to entry of any VR content, brands can reach a massive audience of 2 billion smartphone users who can enjoy 360° video even without a VR headset.

The First Video Game Dubbed in the Lebanese Dialect!

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 18:33:40 +0000

Keywords Studios mandated us recently to work on a new video game dubbing project for Just Cause 3 developed by Avalanche Studios and published by Square Enix. It has been absolutely a blast localizing this game into the Lebanese dialect and we hope to see more games being published in Arabic. To our knowledge, this is the first global video game that has been dubbed into the Lebanese dialect and we are really excited about the feedback. The game is impressive, the graphics are fantastic, and the plot is really cool.

Localizing this game wasn’t a simple job especially that we had a very short time frame to submit the final work. However, our talented and committed team worked long hours and over time to submit a great sounding product. We also were very blessed working with highly talented actors that are considered to be some of the top talents in the industry today. Furthermore, we owe the success of this project largely to our art director who was key in casting the right talents for the game without loosing its original appeal.

Top 10 Rules to Successfully Manage a Video Game Localization Project

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 19:01:30 +0000

Proper management of a video game localization project is essential for its success. Modern video games usually have complex story-lines and game-plays and in turn have a large script. These scripts have more than 100,000 words that are recorded and hence localizing these video games into spoken Arabic is not a walk in the park. We have compiled below the top 10 rules that will help you successfully manage a video game localization project in Arabic or any other language:
1- Organize all your files in a comprehensive manner and place them in a shared folder that is easily accessible by team members.
2- Make sure the naming convention of your files are short and simple.
3- Make use of a project management tool and keep log of the tasks. We recommend Celoxis.
4- If you work with freelance translators, ask them to spend as much time at the studio as possible and not work from home.
5- Study the video game, understand the game-play, the plot, the characters’ bios and play previous versions of the game if possible.
6- Use a cloud based service to share and edit the scripts. We recommend Google drive.
7- Get the actors to preview the scripts prior to recording.
8- Start on time and commit to a certain number of recorded lines per day.
9- Spend enough time on script adaptation before the recording.
10- Review all the files and make sure they are complete before sending them out to the client.

We have been really lucky to work with top video game developers to localize their product into spoken Arabic and we have learned a thing or two along the way. If you have a video game that you want to localize into Arabic, please feel free to contact us to learn more.

Which Arabic Voice Over Talent is Right for You?

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 20:01:49 +0000

Arabic Voice Over

You have a movie, cartoon, advert, radio spot or any project that needs Arabic Voice Over and you are not quite sure how to go about it? You ask around and the feedback around you just makes things more complicated because you realize that there are too many factors that come into play when choosing the proper Arabic voice over talent that would ensure a great final product? Well, we have compiled a couple of best practices that might help you take the proper decision.

1- Understanding the project type and the requirements: That is a no brainer really, but choosing the proper Arabic voice over talent is still a very important part of the project. A good director can help you cast the right talent since he/she usually knows the strengths and weaknesses of the talents that they work with. For example, some talents are really good for cartoon based projects and some are better for drama and others are really good at recording ads. It is very important to understand the project requirements very well and trust the director’s recommendations for a successful project.

2- Identifying your target audience: Every Arabic voice over job is supposed to speak out to a certain target audience; literally. Hence it is essential to be able to speak the target audience’s language. If you are talking to kids, you need to be able to speak their lingo, and if you are talking to business men you should be able to convey confidence etc. Consequently, adapting the translation to your target audience’s style is a very important aspect in delivering a powerful voice over project.

3- Choosing the right Arabic dialect: There are 300+ million Arabs in the Arab world who speak hundreds of different dialects. However, the good news is that modern standard Arabic is common for all. Hence, if you want to reach a vast majority of Arab speakers, you should always pick modern standard Arabic for your projects. Nevertheless, modern standard is not always the best option since it is very heavy and a bit classical and definitely is not the first choice for a comedy series for example. Instead you can opt for a lighter local dialect such as Lebanese that is still understood by the majority of Arabs.

4- Preserve the essence of the original reference video track: The majority of voice over projects that we work with at the studio usually have original English reference and M&E tracks. We find it extremely essential to preserve the essence of the original reference while working on the Arabic voice over track. Our job at the end of the day is to make sure that we are properly communicating the client’s message in as much authenticity as possible.

5- Provide clients with exceptional mixing and mastering services: Last but not least, mixing and mastering are the glue that holds the final project together. When poorly performed, mixing and mastering can easily turn a great voice over project into a major flop. Hence, it is important to work with mixing and mastering engineers that have experience in Arabic voice over projects.

Knowledge & Information about Arabic Language

You have to understand the the Arabic language is very hard sounding and can create a lot of sibilance, hence a talented sound engineer needs to be able to properly deal with the sibilance while making sure that the words are understandable and without affecting the overall audio track quality.

Arabic Video Game Localization Made Easy!

Deafcat Studios — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 13:23:03 +0000

We have been working very hard to put together an optimized system to simplify video game localization into spoken Arabic. We also have been very lucky to work with European clients who helped us learn from their own processes. Let’s face it, European standards are very high and we are very fortunate to be able to cater to their request. A few things we learned along the way:

1- Project Management: It is undeniably the most important building bloc of the job. When working on video game localization projects, the studio is usually working with multiple stakeholders such as translators, actors, quality reviewers, sound engineers and most importantly the game developers. It is important to submit all the material to the game developers exactly in the format they ask for, and they might ask for up to 10 different audio recording format to fit exactly within their game structure. With games that need over than 100 hours of audio recording and 10 different file formats, it is very crucial to have solid project management skills.

2- Comply with the instructions: Since we are working with international clients, it is very important to comply to the instructions that they have send us. We learned that the proper delivery of our files and following instructions to the letter, does not only help us ensure deliveries, but is also very important to the other stakeholders’ deliveries since they are directly related to our own.

3- Transparency and trust: Localization of video games into different languages such as Arabic usually means dealing with clients that have no clue about the language. They do not speak the language and they rely on us to provide them with proper guidance. Hence it is very important to explain to them every detail no matter how frustrating it might be. Sometimes we feel like we are giving Arabic 101 courses but we learned that it is very important to build trust with our clients.

4- Support: It is no secret that all clients like to have outstanding support when asking for our services. As a general rule at the studio, we always go out of our way to provide our clients with whatever support they need. For example, we recently installed Skype conferencing in our studio so that the client and his engineers can assist the recording sessions from overseas. They asked for it, we made it happen.

5- Committing to deliveries: We take our delivery commitments very seriously, for that we understand that our clients are usually very eager to get their products out. They have sales milestones to reach and these are absolutely dependent on our deliveries. Consequently, we feel it is our duty to do whatever it takes to meet the deadlines. Easier said than done, since we are usually running after moody talents and juggling schedules to be able to make sure not one single hour is wasted. It has been truly a blast working on all our video game localization into Arabic projects and we are happy that we acquired that skill. Feel free to drop us a line to discuss a potential collaboration with our studio.

You have a fantastic new game you want to release and want to reach those 300+ million Arabs? Well, we can help you localize your game into modern standard Arabic or the popular Lebanese dialect. Contact us today to learn more.

5.1 Mix for Arabic Dubbing Movies

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 03 May 2015 09:55:39 +0000

It’s always exciting to work on cool Arabic dubbing projects. That’s exactly what we have been doing recently at the studio and it’s just great!
The whole team is buzzing with energy, putting long hour and having a blast especially with a couple of 5.1 projects that we’ve been working on. Mixing a 5.1 movie is very different than mixing a 2.0 movie there’s no doubt about that. It gets even more complicated when you add to the equation Arabic dubbing.

First of all, our casting director needs to find the perfect Arab voice over talents that can match the original English cast. This is an art form by itself and we are very lucky to have a superb director with more than 20 years of experience that does that for us.

When the cast is done, and the Arabic scripts are ready, we start with the recording sessions. Now this is where the magic happens! We are so lucky to work with extremely talented and experienced Arab actors that can easily dub any class. An international supper star! That’s really comforting to know. When the recording sessions are done, our editing team make sure to clean up all the recordings and make the session file ready for our mix engineer. Our mix engineer is by far the superstar of the studio!

It is hard enough mixing all the Arabic dubbed tracks in 2.0, but doing it in 5.1 is a different ball game all together. Our mix engineer needs to make sure that all the Arabic tracks are mixed in to match the same quality of the original movie which is usually a multi-million dollars Hollywood production. How do we do it? Well it is simply talent and dedication! It all starts with a proper analysis or the original movie audio tracks. Sound discrimination, spectrum analysis, timber of sound identification, spatial analysis, volume mix, re-verbs etc. This thorough analysis allows our mix engineer to plan the 5.1 mix properly and to better understand the scope of work.
From that point over, it is basically talent and experience that gets the job done. We are very lucky to have a great team working in synergy together, for that the performance of one team member affects the overall quality of the project.

For more information about 5.1 mixes for Arabic dubbing movies, feel free to drop us a line and get in touch!

All you Need to Know about Arabic Subtitling

Deafcat Studios — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 06:44:57 +0000

For the last couple of weeks we’ve been busy in the studio with re-organizing our Arabic subtitling department in order to deal more efficiently with high volume Arabic subtitling projects. Our main objective was to be able to streamline our process while complying with our clients’ requirements and without compromising quality.

We are proud to have clients from all over the world who work with us. However, having many clients means that we needed to cater to different requirements and hence our subtitling set-up had to be both reliable and flexible.

As a result, my team and I decided to invest in two different systems; Mac and Windows. I’m not gonna get into the spec details of each but let’s just say that both systems are equally powerful. And since both operating systems are completely different, we had to have two different subtitling set-ups using a couple of different software.

After weeks of research and countless demo trials we opted for the below set-ups which I recommended to anybody who is looking to work with Arabic subtitling projects.

Below is the best Windows based Arabic subtitling set-up you can have:

– EZ Titles is a great tool that generate multiple subtitling file formats. We opted for SubRip (.srt) since it is the most common.

– Avid Media Composer to be able to burn and export the final subtitled movie in a variety of formats especially for TV broadcasting. We usually export our movies compressed as Quicktime using the MPEG-2 50 mbit codec which is a TV PAL standard.

– EZ Titles Plugin for Avid Media Composer has an extended support for Arabic script and is very easy to use.

Now for the Mac set-up we opted for the below:

– Annotation Edit is a versatile subtitling tool that is very easy to use. We gave it a test run and thought it was quite powerful.

– Final Cut Pro X is also very user friendly and is packed with all the codecs needed to export movies for broadcasting. We usually compress our movies as QuickTime and use the MPEG IMX 50 codec for TV PAL.

It took us a while to decide on our Arabic subtitling set-ups but we are confident that we made the best choices.

Modern Standard Arabic Voice Over for Cartoons!

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 21:49:03 +0000

A couple of days ago a producer at a TV network contacted me for a potential business collaboration. The project at hand was dubbing into Arabic cartoon series and animated movies. During our conversation, he asked me a few questions that you can find below in this Q&A.

Q: What is the difference between all the various Arabic dialects and which one in your opinion is the best sounding?

A: There are more than 30 dialects in the Arabic language and they are very different from each other. Some dialects are really heavy and influenced by other languages and other dialects are light and closer to the modern standard Arabic, hence the lighter the dialect the more understandable by the majority of Arabs. If you look at mass media in the MENA region, they usually opt for anchors who speak a lighter dialect like Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian or even Tunisian so that all Arabs can understand. It is very difficult for me to choose the best sounding dialect since it is very subjective; however, if I was to pick one, I would select a dialect that is light and modern such as Lebanese or Egyptian.

Q: Should Arabic voice over for cartoons be performed in modern standard Arabic or in a specific dialect?

A: Well if the cartoon is to be broadcasted to a mass regional audience, then it would make more sense to record it in modern standard Arabic and not a specific dialect.

Q: Do you think modern standard Arabic can be used for comedy roles or would it be better to opt for the local slang?

A: There is no doubt that some Arab regions are more relaxed than others, and people of these regions are usually very sociable and have a great sense of humor. Therefore, their local dialects can also be perceived as humorous. However, modern standard Arabic can be equally humorous if not more. We have dubbed funny cartoon series into modern standard Arabic and they were highly successful. I would definitely recommend it over a local dialect.

You can watch below some of the cartoons that have been dubbed with modern standard Arabic voice over.

Get in touch with us today and we’ll provide you with the most comprehensive offering while committing to high quality service at a smart cost.