Somali voice over services

Somali is a Cushitic language spoken across Somalia, Somaliland, Djibouti and the Somali region of Ethiopia, with a large community in Kenya and a long-established diaspora in Britain. It carries one of the richest oral poetic traditions anywhere — verse composed, memorised and performed rather than written down.

Which is why its official alphabet is only as old as 1972. Somali had no standardised script until the Latin orthography was adopted that year, and decades of civil war afterwards interrupted schooling for whole generations.

That history has a practical consequence worth planning around. There is a meaningful part of the Somali-speaking audience that understands the spoken language completely and reads it less comfortably. For a public-health campaign, an emergency message or resettlement information, that means subtitles do not substitute for audio: the recording is the accessible channel and the text is the supplement, which is the reverse of the assumption most briefs start from.

It also means the oral tradition is an asset rather than a gap. Somali audiences are practised, attentive listeners with a high bar for how language is delivered, and a flat or rushed read is noticed. It rewards casting well and directing properly.

Somali is also a British public-services language. The community here is one of the largest African-language populations in the UK, concentrated in London, Bristol, Cardiff and Leicester, and NHS, council and charity communications use Somali for exactly that reason. Three of our four Somali voices are London-based, so sessions can be attended in person and run to European hours.