Samoan voice over services

Samoan has two registers that a demo reel cannot show you. Tautala lelei, the formal «t-style», is what church, government, broadcast and any written text uses. Tautala leaga, the everyday «k-style», is what people actually speak at home — and using it in an official context reads as disrespectful, while using the formal style in a friendly consumer ad reads as stiff. So we ask who is listening and in what setting, then record auditions in the right register against your own copy.

They are the two spoken styles of Samoan. The t-style, traditionally called tautala lelei, is used in all writing and in broadcasting, church, school and formal settings. The k-style, tautala leaga, is everyday speech: t is pronounced k, n becomes a ng sound, and r becomes l. The distinction is about setting rather than correctness, and it is the single most useful thing you can specify when you brief a Samoan recording.

As a rule of thumb, anything institutional, broadcast or official wants t-style, and anything conversational, community-facing or addressed to people rather than at them usually wants k-style. Health campaigns can go either way depending on whether the tone is authoritative or neighbourly. Tell us who the piece is for and we will recommend one — and if it genuinely could go either way, we can audition both.

No, and this catches people out. Samoan is only written in one form, the t-style, so a script gives you no signal at all about how it should be spoken. The decision lives entirely in the brief. If nobody makes it deliberately, it gets made by default in the booth, which is how community content ends up sounding like an official announcement.

They are part of Samoan spelling, not optional accents. The glottal stop and the macrons over long vowels distinguish words from one another, so dropping them can change what a line says. They make no difference to the audio, but they matter for subtitles, captions, lower thirds and any on-screen text, and systems that don't support them strip them without warning. Worth confirming your fonts and CMS carry them before the graphics are built.

Usually somewhere else, and it is worth checking before you write. Samoan is official in Samoa and American Samoa, but very large Samoan communities live in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. That affects the references that land, the mix of English loanwords that sounds natural, and often whether the piece needs an English version alongside it.

Allow a few days more than for a major language. Our Samoan speakers are spread between Apia, Auckland and Sydney — there are more Samoans in New Zealand than in some parts of Samoa — so sourcing means working across three time zones. Brief us early and your project manager will hold to a date.

Public-health and vaccination campaigns, government and civic information, education and school communications, social services and community outreach, broadcast and radio, and accessibility work for Pacific communities in New Zealand and Australia.

Delivered to your spec. One thing to check on the text side: the Samoan glottal stop is written with an ʻokina, a proper character rather than an apostrophe, and word processors love to convert it into a curly quote.

Less than people expect: the script, or the draft of it, its total running time or word count, where the recording will be used, and the date you need it by. If the script is not signed off yet, send the draft anyway — we would rather quote on what exists than wait for a version that eats your deadline. A named project manager comes back with an itemised quote, normally within four working hours.

More than half of enquiries get a reply within thirty minutes during office hours (Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm UK time), and the itemised quote normally follows within four working hours. After that you have one dedicated project manager who owns the job from brief to final file — not a ticket queue, and not a different name on every email. If it is easier, call +44 207 095 5730 and ask for them by name.

Yes, and it is one of the commonest reasons people get in touch. Tell us it is for a pitch and you get a figure you can put in front of your own client, itemised so it stands up to being picked apart, with no obligation and no follow-up sales calls if the pitch goes elsewhere. If it lands, the quote still holds and we already know the project.