A challenging VO

I’ve just been recording the voiceover for a project produced by Voxcast in Holland. I’ve worked for them and other companies around the world quite a few times and invariably when dealing with non English speaking countries there are issues with pronunciation.  There’s always a worry that you might get the name of the client wrong.

The voiceover I’ve just recorded was one of these – on the face of it a simple set of instructions on how to set up a video conferencing system.  All pretty straightforward and the only word in the script I wasn’t sure how to pronunce was the company name “Mammoet”.  I checked with the guys at Voxcast and they weren’t quite sure how it should be said either. They suggested I sent a few alternatives when I recorded mhy voiceover – which I did.

I sent “Mam-m-o-ay” (thinking “moet” like the champagne) “Mam-moat” and “Ma-mo-ett” .  However they were all wrong and the next day I had to re-record the voiceover: After checking it had emerged that the name is “Mam-moot”.

Michiel at Voxcast told me “It’s some kind of elephant”. In fact he HAD told me that on the first day but I didn’t really registered it. I might have come up with the correct pronunciation in the voiceover if I had thought about it though because I might have realised that a Mammoth is (or was) “some kind of elephant”.

The Mammoet Video Conferencing instructions project was being produced by Voxcast