It’s time to localize your eLearning course. You have onscreen text and audio components. The text part seems pretty straight-forward, but what do you do with the audio? There are several considerations when localizing the audio component of your eLearning course. As a leading provider of eLearning localization solutions, E-ging has solutions for you. Do you choose voiceover recording or subtitling? Let’s start by explaining the difference between the two and then looking at the pros and cons of each one.

Voiceover means re-recording the audio files into your target language. Subtitling involves adding subtitles to the narration of the course, and then replacing these subtitles with another language.

VOICEOVER VS SUBTITLING

Pros and Cons of e-Learning Voiceover Recording
Adding multilingual voiceovers makes your localized course look and sound complete and professional. It is a great option when your course has a lot of on-screen text or multiple speakers in your audio files. There are also three different voiceover options to consider: off-camera narration, UN-style narration, and lip-synching (dubbing). Off-camera narration is most common in corporate training, and, along with UN-style, is the much more cost-effective than lip-synching. Lip-synching provides the most relatable audio component, but it also requires more work with timing and engineering, meaning more time and a greater cost.

On the other hand, though, voiceover recording is more expensive than subtitling your eLearning materials and you may want to match your studio-quality English recordings with similar quality for your localized versions. Also, voiceover recording involves translating a script. If the text expands, so might the length of the recording, which might make the voiceover talent have to speak faster. All of this affects audio synching and timing.

Pros and Cons of e-Learning Subtitling
Subtitling is cheaper than voiceover production and does not affect the original audio track of your training course. Also, your learners may be able to understand the original audio, but they may not be able to read it – subtitling helps with this.

While it does not affect the audio track, however, subtitling affects the course visually in terms of screen space. Therefore, you have to try and keep the subtitles at about two lines apiece. Language expansion might make this more difficult. A lot of languages expand when translated from English, so while your English script might meet special requirements, the translation may not. Subtitling also becomes increasingly difficult with lots of onscreen text and multiple speakers as timing becomes very tricky.

Which is best for you?
Consider the following: expectations, budget, and quality. If your budget is lower, then you may want to look at subtitling. Also, look at the course itself. If there is a lot of on-screen text, voiceover might be a better option. How many speakers do you have in your course? When you start getting into 2, 3 or more voices, then subtitling becomes a challenge.