600 People Found, Selected, and Recorded Within 2 Months

Our team can drink champagne! Why? Because we've effectively worked together on a huge project for a voice-recognition system, and completed it successfully.

What Have We Done? Read the Crazy Story about What Accent Network Can Do

Our goal: to record 50 short phrases in 7 languages.

Recorded languages: Italian, Spanish (EU), German, Spanish (Mex), English (Au), English (US), English (Ca).

People who participated: native speakers from Spain, Italy, Germany, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia.

Challenge: to collect and select an enormous quantity of people based on certain criteria information, to teach them, and to record them within tight deadline.

Not long ago, Accent Network was entrusted with a really challenging project– we should gather 600 people, native speakers in 7 languages, select them meeting the necessary criteria, and record 50 phrases per person in their native languages in a professional studio.

The task was a little bit tricky, because this project was a non-standard one, and didn't require the working techniques we usually use with voice-over projects (even the ones we use for multilingual projects), but it required invention and imagination together with the ability to plan considering multiple perspectives, and perspective thinking.

Our team decided to start working on this interesting project, whose final aim was to help a voice recognition system to understand human speech in different languages, and different accents. It took us three days to design the strategy as to how we would work.

Planning: Starting a Project with a Plan

Each project needs a well-detailed and realistic calendar, and its execution should be strict. When you are on the second step, you should be thinking about what the fourth step will be like, and also consider at every stage if you are keeping up with the plan. A very important fact is that you should know the threads, and have a 'Plan B' and even a 'Plan C' in case things don't turn out as expected.

So, we started with setting up the plan, and with the realization of the first steps to move:

- assigning tasks, and obligations to the team;

- considering the plan, and the calendar in detail, so that each team member knew what to do;

- preparing our studios in each of the 6 countries;

- arranging audio equipment shipping to the studios;

- and running the recording process itself!

Then, we decided to move forward with looking for people who would be interested in participating in the project, and establishing contacts with studios in the required countries.

Anastasia, Project Manager: 

'Well, it's all about communication. Speaking with people (600 in all who came to record their voices, and 1000 more who were interested, but for some reason were not selected, or didn't come), explaining the objective of the recording to them, setting a timetable. I needed to be attentive, and patient, too. Because when you look for the necessary people, speak to them, and explain the task and the goal, you also represent your company, and even clients, and their interests.'

Recording for a Voice-recognition System: Realization

After we prepared our studios in Barcelona, Rome, Berlin, Madrid, Austin, Sydney, and Calgary, and special audio recording equipment was received by them, Accent Network started a promotional campaign to look for the necessary people to participate.

We needed to find people from Spain, USA, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Italy, and Germany. Fulfilling the requirements turned out to be a tricky task, because we had to find special accents from different regions in those countries, different ages (a lot of children took part), and get male and female voices in proportion (50% male and 50% female), and to finish all this within tight deadlines stated by the client.

Volha, Marketing Specialist

'We've gathered an enormous quantity of people within a tight timeline, and with some requirements for them. All means of communication were used – social media, advertisements, acquaintances, web-sites about local events, schools, flyers, etc.'

Looking for the People, and Recording Them: What We Did in a Few Words:

1. Registered people who were interested in participating in the project.

2. Selected each of them manually, considering their data provided – gender, age, language accent.

3. Compared the data we had with the client's requirements.

4. Sent invitation to those people who matched our requirements as well as our client's. We used e-mails, messages, and telephone calls to contact them.

5. Set the dates to record, and provided the possibility for people to select the most appropriate day, and time for them to come to the recording studio.

6. Provided quick voice-recording training for people before recording.

7. Recorded people.

8. Checked the recording files, and sent them to the client.

The Recording Process: Quick Training

As all the people who took part in the recording for the voice recognition system were not professional voice-overs (this was one of the client's requirements), they had never been in professional studios, and were not familiar with the special audio equipment.

All the people who took part in the project (remember, 600 in all) were taught by our team before recording. We told them how to pronounce words, how to control breath while speaking, and gave a brief explanation about microphones, headphones, and other audio, and multimedia equipment.

What You Should Know: Working with People

Working with people from different countries who have a different mentality, and logics can sometimes be not an easy thing. Accent Network has been in the language industry for more than 15 years now, working with providers from every country, and our team knows how to work with people, considering their different cultural backgrounds, and understands them, because of that, every project is successfully executed and completed for our clients.

Lluis, COO

'Working on this project was really exciting and, at the same time, interesting for our team. There were more than 12 of us working towards the same common goal. Moving the recording equipment to different countries, planning the strategy to recruit people considering the different requirements (profile, age, gender), and getting to have it all coordinated was a great challenge. Being able to do so, while keeping our client's high quality standards and deadlines, filled us with immense satisfaction.'

Now, with the great expertise gained by working on huge multilingual projects, our team is open to help you with new tasks and ideas.

Who knows, maybe, by having participated in the recording of a voice recognition system, we have contributed towards the future of us all.

Our team expresses gratitude to all the people who were interested, and participated in such a great recording project. Good job!

Canadian voice

Thank you so much for the opportunity!

Italian voice

It was an interesting collaboration. I worked only five or ten minutes, but it was really amusing.Thank you a lot for this experience.I hope to work with you again.

Spanish (Castilian) voice

This is more than experience. Everything was easy and funny. Nice people to work with, and the process was very well prepared. I'm happy to be a part of Cortana project.