Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese language

It is generally agreed that Vietnamese belongs to the Vietic branch of the Austroasiatic family of languages. It is by far the most widely spoken of all the Austroasiatic languages – in fact it is spoken by more people than all the others (approximately 150) combined.

The history of Vietnamese is difficult to establish, as it has been influenced so heavily by other languages, particularly Chinese in the early centuries, and French in the colonial days. However, some linguists have proposed six periods of development:

• Pre-Vietnamese – the original language from which Vietnamese (and the related Muong language) descended.
• Proto-Vietnamese – from around the 7th-9th century – the oldest version of Vietnamese before the huge influx of Chinese vocabulary.
• Archaic Vietnamese – from around the 10th century – during this period the language evolved with the adoption of Chinese vocabulary.
• Ancient Vietnamese – from around the 15th century – during this time the language became more tonal (increasing from three to six tones).
• Middle Vietnamese – from the 17th century – this period saw the influence of European languages, with the spread of colonialism.
• Modern Vietnamese – from the 19th century – the standardisation of the language as we know it today.

Which countries have Vietnamese as a national language?

Vietnamese is the official language of Vietnam.

How many people speak Vietnamese as their first language?

It is estimated that approximately 80 million people speak Vietnamese as their first language, mainly in Vietnam (where it is the mother tongue of around 90% of the population).

Other countries with significant Vietnamese-speaking communities include the United States, China, Cambodia, France, Australia, Laos, Canada and Thailand.

Did you know…

• Like Chinese, Vietnamese is a tonal language – the meaning of words can be changed by subtle variations in pitch. There are six tones – mid-level, low falling, high rising, mid dipping-rising, high breaking-rising and low falling constricted.
• Vietnamese dialects are often split into three groups – northern (spoken in Hanoi), central (Hue) and southern (Ho Chi Minh City). The standard language (and prestige dialect) is based on the northern dialect.
• Originally Vietnamese was written using a Chinese-like script called Chữ-nôm, which was used until the 20th century. In the 17th century, Roman Catholic missionaries introduced a Latin-based script, Quốc Ngữ, which has been used ever since.

The Vietnamese economy

Since the mid-1980s, Vietnam has been transitioning from a centrally-planned economy to a socialist market economy. The country has experienced high levels of economic growth during this period, and has been identified by Goldman Sachs as one of the Next Eleven countries (those with a high potential of becoming one of the world’s largest economies in the 21st century).

State-owned enterprises account for around 40% of the country’s GDP. Industry’s share of economic output is increasing (currently around 41% of GDP) while agriculture’s is decreasing (22%). Vietnam joined the World Trade Organisation in 2007.