Welsh 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, voice over 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. Voice over 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 Welsh language and accent

Welsh is Britain’s oldest language. It is said to date back 4,000 years. Welsh developed from the Celtic language which was spoken all over Europe. The Celtic that was spoken in Europe became Brittonic in Britain and it was spoken by Southern Scots, English and Welsh people. Celtic was spoken until the Roman Empire conquered Britain in around 43 AD.

The Romans who came to Britain spoke Latin and by 70 AD most of Britain was speaking Latin, which was the official language, although Brittonic was still spoken at home. However, it is thanks to the Romans that we have written history because the Brittonic people did not put things down in writing and relied upon oral history instead.

Latin words began to influence the Brittonic language, especially for the names of objects which before the Romans had not existed, such as Bridge.

Between 400 and 700 AD Brittonic split into four different languages and these became Cornish, Cumbric, Breton and Welsh. Around 785 the construction of Offa’s Dyke began and this created the border between England and Wales. The Welsh were described as Cymry, meaning fellow countryman.

In the 9th century, the alphabet was adapted from Latin to Welsh. The Norman invaders however brought back English speakers to Wales, they began to use English for official purposes and this went through the centuries, including the Victorian period, when the use of the Welsh language was discouraged and only English was taught in Welsh schools.

By the time of the First World War, it was said that only just below half of the population spoke Welsh. However, there were people who wanted to keep the language alive and in 1962 The Welsh Language Society was formed. This group campaigned for a number of causes, one of which was the creation of bilingual road signs, which you can see today. In 1982 the Welsh got their own television channel, S4C. Today Welsh is taught in all Primary and Secondary Schools.

Listen to Comedian, Rob Brydon talking English with a Welsh accent in this You Tube clip.