Irish English voice over services

Irish English, or Hiberno-English, is a variety in its own right rather than British English with a lilt. It carries the imprint of Irish in its sound, its rhythm and a good deal of its everyday vocabulary, and it developed from the English brought to Ireland with the Norman invasion and the later colonisation, absorbing the language already spoken there.

The practical decision on most briefs is which Irish accent. The English of the Republic and the English of Ulster differ audibly in vowels and intonation, and a campaign aimed at Dublin is not the same cast as one aimed at Belfast. Tell us where the audience is and we cast for it rather than defaulting to whichever comes first.

Worth clearing up before casting: Irish English is not Irish. Irish, or Gaeilge, is a Celtic language, not an accent of English, and it is voiced by different actors entirely. Briefs that ask for «an Irish voice» sometimes mean one and sometimes the other, so it is worth confirming which at the start.

What a native brings is the same as anywhere: the vowel sounds and intonation that make a read sound like a person rather than an impression, the cultural reference points that let idiom land, the vocabulary borrowed from Irish that appears in ordinary speech, and enough fluency that none of it draws attention to itself.

Demand usually comes from corporate and eLearning content for Irish teams, advertising aimed at the Irish market, tourism, financial services and technology — Dublin being a European base for a good part of that sector — and from film and television work where a character has to sound Irish rather than approximately Irish.