Our fully equipped media studio is capable of producing complex multi-language projects. This page gives an example of a voiceover project that we produced for a Prison in the UK to help them with the management of foreign national prisoners.

The styles and techniques demonstrated here can be easily adapted to match your own multilingual voiceover requirements. If you have a similar project, K International's team can be contacted on 01908 572600, via email on info@k-international.com or via the contact page on this website.

The Brief

The project was to produce the induction programme used within a UK Prison in a format that is understandable by all parties.

The induction programme is shown to all new arrivals at any UK Prison. It covers a wide variety of topics such as fire information for prisoners, rules of the prison wing, court appearance procedures, visiting orders, the details of current educational programmes and how to report racist incidents, harassment, or discrimination. The subjects covered in the programme can make a great difference to the lives of the prisoners and the smooth running of the prison so it was vital that this information is understood.

Illiteracy is common within the prison population with almost 50% of prisoners not being able to read, so any printed material has to be explained. This adds considerable costs in cases of foreign nationals as prisons have to bring in people to explain the induction process face-to-face and again later on in the process when procedures have to be re-explained.

After consultation with K International the following solution was developed and installed.

Multilingual Voiceovers

K International suggested that the induction programme should be supplied in an audio format that could be played (as many times as needed) to the prisoners. This would be made available in all languages that are spoken by inmates within the prison.

The process to achieve this was as follows.

• Prepare the script. Working closely with the prison we prepared an English script that included all of the relevant information needed in the induction programme. After several rounds of amendments this was agreed upon and sent for translation.
• Translate the script. The script was translated into 10 languages. It is important that the script is translated and carefully prepared for the voiceover artists as they are not translators.
• Record the voice. We hosted the recording sessions for the Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian and Spanish. Sessions took almost 10 days of studio time to record. The picture below is of our studio in action on this project.
• Test. After editing each of these recordings were checked by the vocal artist and an independent language speaker for linguistic completeness and to ensure they were fit for purpose.
• Distribute. We can distribute recordings in all of the leading formats including, CD, DVD, Wav, podcast and tape. In this instance CDs were produced (including artwork for the case) and 50 copies sent to the prison.

The Outcome

The client was delighted. They found that the audio recordings of the induction material is better understood and saves money every month on telephone and face-to-face interpreting costs.

Following an audit by the Inspector of Prisons this process has now been highlighted as best practice and will be rolled out to the whole of the Prison Service.

After the project was complete this was our feedback,

“ … the CDs you produced for us have been highlighted as best practice ... thank you very much for all your help… Since we have had audio versions of our induction material we have been able to make significant savings on telephone interpreting. ”

K International can also produce video projects as well for the public sector, to see an example of our work read the case study about the Scottish Prison Service on this website.

If you do have a project that includes the production of foreign language material contact K International on 01908 572600, via email on info@k-international.com or via the contact page on this website. We are the approved supplier to the UK Government (via 05/GEN/25), have solutions to all budgets and (last but not least) we are here to help.