Caribbean Accent Voice Over Recordings

Working with translation and production companies

Adding audio visual services to your mix will create many new sales opportunities for your team. We can add translation, voiceover and subtitling to your company’s offering, which will appear seamless to your clients and yet mesh easily with the processes in your own departments.

Matinée has over 40 years of experience working alongside translation and production companies. So you can be sure our project managers are fully at home with the technical process of supervising and delivering localised material, in a professional and timely manner.

If you are a translation company, we will send you some helpful guidelines for providing us with copy or scripts, as they will need to be formatted correctly for voicing or for subtitling. If you are a production company, we can organise translations and create the subtitles in your preferred format. Voiceover recordings can be supplied as edited files, or we can remix with the original music and effects and layback to complete the new video soundtrack, ready to go.

Working seamlessly with your team, we can take on all or part of the process, according to your needs, and help widen your service offering.

Origins of the Caribbean language and accent

The Caribbean islands were originally inhabited by nomadic tribes that came from Venezuela and Guyana. In 1492 Christopher Columbus, who was in the service of the Reyes Catolicos, Isabel and Ferdinand, came across the Caribbean islands and claimed Trinidad for the Spaniards.

In 1623, the British discovered the Caribbean and colonised amongst other islands, Antigua and Barbados. Next came the French and then the Dutch. All of the countries who colonised the islands, used them in the slave trade. They brought over hundreds of people from West Africa to work on the plantations.

Due to the number of different spoken languages, the people on the islands began to speak Pidgin languages and English became one them as slaves needed to be able to communicate with their masters. Other Pidgin languages developed as the slaves spoke to each other and English and African were big influences. Gradually as the settlers had children began to speak to each other, Pidgin became a creole language. A creole language is one which was pidgin, but has developed to become more complex and has an increased vocabulary and sound structure.

Caribbean creole in English doesn’t, for example use the verb ‘To Be’ – So a person might say in creole she English, rather than she is English. It is easily understood, but the structure is less complex. Written English as used in education and business is standard British.

Each Caribbean island has its own distinct dialect, which are all influenced by the countries which colonised them. There is a mixture of Portuguese, French, Spanish and English amongst the islands. The creole languages are used at home, but it is in some parts also heard on the radio and television. If you want to hear what a Barbados accent is like when speaking English, take a look at this news programme, which speaks to former Barbados Prime Minister, Owen Arthur.