Arabic – 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.

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.

Arabic Voice Over, Finding the Right Talent!

Deafcat Studios — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 09:38:34 +0000

Finding fresh talents in the Middle East for Arabic voice over projects is becoming more and more difficult. We live in an age where the broadcasting and the whole media industry in general reached its lowest in terms of its quality of content production and more specifically Arabic content production! There’s no doubt that some clients choose to produce cheap content just for the sake of maximizing their profits. Yet it is without a doubt that those who care enough to produce higher quality content reap the benefits. Consequently finding talent that can deliver high quality content for Arabic voice over projects is becoming a very difficult task.
However, there’s always amazing talent out there, and we at the studio are lucky to work with a few. Yet talent comes with a cost, and over the years we learned that paying a little extra brings indisputable added value for our projects.

It is without a doubt that a well spoken actor with experience who masters the Arabic language is always a delight to work with especially for Arabic voice over projects. At the end of day, the objective of most VO projects is to communicate a message, and that’s simpler said than done. For that reason, a talented and experienced actor can facilitate the process and turn the project into a success.

We have a database of over more than 1,000 Arab talents from all ages and genders. Get in touch with us today and we will cast the right talent for your projects.

Arabic dubbing, Quality vs. Price!

Deafcat Studios — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 20:22:00 +0000

For the past couple of weeks, my team an I have been negotiating an Arabic dubbing project with an Indian film TV station based in Dubai, which got us to do a calculation exercise that I thought I’d share with you.
It all started when we got approached by an Indian TV station who was looking to partner up with different recording studios in Lebanon and hence get the best out of their investment. They were looking for studios that can provide them with recording services in Arabic, and more specifically Syrian dubbing for their Indian movies at the lowest cost possible and they sent us a request to quote them accordingly.

A few things we learned from this exercise:

1- Syrian talent prefer to get paid per scene instead of hours.

2- On average, there are 200 scenes in a 100 min Indian movie and an average of 15 main actors in each movie.

3- Client likes to go with a fixed price per movie when it comes to dubbing into Arabic.

4- The cost breakdown for an Arabic dubbing project are as per the below:

Cost of actors.
Dubbing director.
Music and effects track creation (M&E).
Mixing and mastering.
Script translation into Arabic and adaptation into the Syrian dialect.
Studio time.

When we came back to the client with our quotation, we were surprised to find out that our cost was 20% higher than the other studios. 20% was our profit margin, and hence we did not understand how the other studios could afford to take on the project and still make profit. So we had to re-assess the project scope and re-do the calculation a couple of times and every time, we realized that if we charged 20% less we wouldn’t be making any profit and since it was a fixed cost, we would actually loose money if the Indian movie had more scenes than the expected average.

After doing a couple of tests, we figured out that the only way to cut the cost is by reducing the price of all the recording services and especially the costs of the dubbing director and the M&E track creation. Consequently, less time would be spent on dubbing direction and the M&E track creation which would reflect directly on the quality of the final product.

In fact, in order to make sure that we were right, I asked the client to send me a demo of an Indian movie dubbed into Arabic that has been produced by another studio that charged 20% less than us. I looked at the video and indeed, there was a major difference in quality. Basically, the lip-sync was way off and the M&E track was all over the place and that made perfect sense since in order to get a proper lip-sync and M&E track both the dubbing director and the mixing engineer need to spend a substantial amount of time on the job which was out of the question, since more time means more money and a higher cost.

Bottom line, I believe that quality should never be compromised for price because when you have a high quality product, your audience will be more engaged with your movies and hence would come back for more.

DeafCat Studios will provide you with the highest quality Arabic dubbing services at the lowest rates possible.

Arabic E-Learning Project

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 19:27:24 +0000

So it seems that E-Learning is a multi-billion dollar industry, and we had no clue. Well that’s until we were approached by a very cool client who was tackling this growing sector in the Middle East. Apparently, big corporations in the MENA region and more specifically in the GCC (UAE and Saudi Arabia), invest a lot in their HR departments and encourage employees to take extra curricular educational lessons to improve their knowledge and skills. That’s where my client’s company plays a bridging role between international educational institutions and regional companies by providing E-learning solutions in Arabic for employees. We provide him with high quality recording and mastering for the Arabic scripts.
Not to mention that the whole team at DeafCat Studios is very excited to work on these e-learning projects for two reasons:

1- They allow us to cater to a relatively new e-learning industry in the Middle East.
2- We are actually learning from these courses… for free.

Recording studio for Arabic projects

Deafcat Studios — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:55:36 +0000

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been receiving quite a few emails from foreign clients asking us about how to choose which dialect they need to adopt for the dubbing projects in Arabic. It also seems that all the soaps that are being dubbed into Arabic c are being done in the Syrian dialect. Well, ten years ago, the most popular soaps were dubbed in classical Arabic and they had as much impact if not more than the Syrian ones. In my opinion, Syrian dialect has picked up in the dubbing of soaps in Arabic, just because the production houses found it very cost effective to go to a Syrian company with highly competitive cost.

At DeafCat Studios, we believe that in order to reach the highest number of Arabic speaking people in the region, it is better if a soap is dubbed in a classical Arabic and not the Syrian or any other dialect. Classical Arabic is a beautiful and very rich language and it brings a lot of value and class to any project.

Imagine if all those Turkish soaps were dubbed in classical Arabic, wouldn’t have they sounded better?