Voice over talent can help to share scientific knowledge

Posted by Kerry Vallins on May 9, 2017

Believe it or not, the English language is one of the main barriers to sharing knowledge amongst the international scientific community. Many working in scientific fields are looking to break down those barriers with voice over talent that better connects scientists and academics.

 A great voice over can make any product more relatable to your consumer. For more information on how voice over artists can benefit your brand, read our blog: ‘Win consumer trust with professional voice over talent.’

Research published in the journal PLOS Biology has highlighted how serious the problem with the English language can be when it comes to sharing research and knowledge.

The document’s authors looked at more than 75,000 articles published in 16 different languages within the field of biodiversity conversation. Some 48,000 were published in English, representing approximately six out of 10 documents. Spanish was the next language at 9,520 documents with Portuguese representing 7,800.

Surprisingly, the Netherlands, which is seeing large changes in its natural ecosystem, was bottom of the table with only 49 papers published in Dutch.   

Why?  Because fundamentally, ideas and research are being lost in translation – or to the decision not to translate.

Making that decision, and choosing the right voice over talent from a leading voice over agency can help break down those global language barriers in the scientific community.

How multilingual voice over talent can connect global communities

The English language has a solid grip on the global scientific community; in some areas, even at the primary school level.

In Nigeria, a ministerial proposal to teach science in three indigenous languages from the primary school level has been unilaterally rejected.

The political majority in the country (home to hundreds of different languages and dialects), wishes to stick with its official language of English, feeling the indigenous-language proposals aren’t the best use of resources and that English is the driving force of a competitive global economy.

There’s little doubt though that having most discussions of a scientific level specifically in English means some parts of scientific communities may not be as integral to research as they could or should be.

So, how can a professional voice over service help? By localizing those studies for various new media applications, performing international quality checks, and using specialist voice over editorial review processes to reach out to more people and make them part of the conversation.

Choose from a network of 2,000 native speakers

With voice over service that includes a network of over 2,000 native, specialist professional voice over talent, our agency can help you reach out to a global audience by localizing existing content.

In a paper called Is there Science beyond English? written by Drs R. Meneghini and A L Packer over a decade ago, they point out that 9 of the last 25 Nobel Prize winners in Literature (at the time of writing) wrote their works in English. The other 16 winners had to wait until their works were translated into English to get the attention of the committee!

Scientific pearls of wisdom from international arenas are being lost because those scientific communities may not be as proficient in English. And those that do join the conversation have to wait a long time for such detailed papers to be translated into other languages.

It doesn’t have to be that way, whether you’re in the scientific community or another field, if you choose from our pool of voice over talent with expertise in over 75 languages. It’s not rocket science – Voice Talent Online’s services can help localize your content to new international territories and introduce you to new markets.

A great voice over can make any product more relatable to your consumer. For more information on how voice over artists can benefit your brand, read our blog: ‘Win consumer trust with professional voice over talent.’

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