Macedonian Voice Over Agency

Working with translation and production companies

Adding audio visual services to your mix will create many new sales opportunities for your team.

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. 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.

If you are a translation company, we will send you some helpful guidelines when providing us with copy or scripts, and we can either work from your translations or handle the whole project for you, including translation. If you are a production company, we will provide translations or subtitles in your preferred format; whether that’s subtitle-ready files (XML or PNG), or burnt in as fully-subtitled videos. Voiceover recordings can be supplied as edited files, or we can remix with the original music and effects and provide a finished video, 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.

A short history on the Macedonian language

Macedonian belongs to the southern Slavic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It is closely related to (and largely mutually intelligible with) Bulgarian. Both languages use the Cyrillic alphabet, and together they make up the East South Slavic language group.

The modern Macedonian language is not related to the Ancient Macedonian language, which was probably a variety of Greek. There is ongoing debate with Greece over the use of the name Macedonian. There is also ongoing debate with Bulgaria over its distinctiveness from Bulgarian.

The development of written Macedonian can be traced back to the 9th century, with the foundation of the Ohrid Literary School. Until the 11th century the language was written using the Glagolithic script. The grammar stabilised during the 15th century, and a literary standard began to emerge in the 19th century. This was mainly based on the central variants of the western dialect.

Standard Macedonian was established as the official language of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in 1945.

Which countries have Macedonian as a national language?

Macedonian is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. It is also an officially recognised minority language in parts of Albania, Romania and Serbia.

How many people speak Macedonian as their first language?

It is estimated that approximately two million people speak Macedonian as their first language, roughly two thirds of them living in Macedonia. There are significant Macedonian-speaking populations in Greece (Aegean Macedonia), Bulgaria, Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia and Australia.

Did you know…

• Macedonian shares many words with the languages of Macedonia’s neighbouring countries, including Bulgaria, Serbia and Croatia. Turkish has also had a significant influence on the language, due to Macedonia being part of the Ottoman Empire.
• There are three main Macedonian dialect groups: northern (similar to Serbian dialects), eastern (similar to Bulgarian) and western (the most distinct dialects, chosen as the base for the modern standard language).

The Macedonian economy

When Macedonia became independent in 1991, it was the poorest of the former Yugoslavian republics, accounting for just 5% of the total federal output of goods and services.

Following independence, the country’s economic growth has been hindered by several factors, including UN sanctions on Yugoslavia, a Greek economic embargo (over the country’s name), a lack of infrastructure, the Kosovo war and then the ethnic Albanian uprising.

Things have improved more recently through privatisation, economic reform and an increase in foreign investment.