May 26, 2017 Mitsue-Links' Narration Recording Service

Our voice recording venture commenced in May 1991, and we are the Mitsue-Links department with the longest history. I am proud to announce that over our 26 years as a department, we have worked with over 500 clients on a countless number of narration projects.

Through our work, we have acquired a wealth of experience in recording, directing and editing audio for a variety of genres; including for film and broadcast - such as dramas and documentaries, telephone guidance, car navigation, computer games, and productions for both voice synthesis and voice recognition research and development. With our know-how and in-house, high-tech recording studio, we provide a complete one-stop service from assignment of a narrator to direction and editing.

Since our studio's inception, and as our business has grown over the years, we are now in our third location - at Sumitomo Fudosan's Shinjuku Grand Tower, the same building as our head office. Our new control room is spacious and can comfortably accommodate up to 8 persons. Furthermore, we have large television monitors that ensure smoother, more efficient recording of simultaneous narration for video productions.

Additionally, our studio is located on the 33rd floor. It may be one of the more unique studios in Japan.

Our recording studio

There is increasing demand for multilingual narration production across a diverse array of languages.

Until a couple of years ago, the only language required other than Japanese was American English, however, in recent years British English, Spanish (European / South American), Portuguese (European / South American), Chinese (Mandarin / Cantonese, Taiwanese), Korean, Arabic, Turkish, French, German, and so on, are increasing in popularity.

The most important aspect to be thoughtful of when recording multilingual narrations is translation. Distinctions between what is considered "written language" and "spoken language" can mean that expressions used on websites and manuals don`t always work well in narrations. If translation is performed without consciousness of the natural spoken language then content may be rendered strange in both expression and style – thus resulting in the production of lower-quality narrations. Many of our foreign-language narrators are also involved in translation work - they are professionals in their mother-tongue - therefore, when necessary, they can make comments and suggestions to improve the grammar and phrases in translated manuscripts. No matter how good a studio or narrator is, if a translation lacks quality and naturalness it will likely lose some of its desired impact.

Even in Japan, there are times when the Japanese language needs to be localized through translation. Recently, I had the opportunity to work on a project that involved the translation of standard Japanese to regional dialects. Once the manuscripts had been translated, there were many terms and phrases which I couldn’t even understand. Japanese is a complex and interesting language!