Services:
Voice-over and Translation  

Languages:
French, Italian, German, Spanish (Castilian and Latin American), Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, and Tagalog. 

Haunted Places is a Spotify Original podcast which enables listeners to visit the world’s most haunted destinations without leaving the comfort of their own room. The series provides insight into each location, revealing its frightening, real history, as well as its spooky and supernatural story. The English language episodes are voiced by a single narrator, Greg Polcyn, and include original music and sound effects to create a highly atmospheric show that feels more like an audio play than a simple podcast. Spotify approached us to localise eight 45-minute episodes of Haunted Places in 12 different versions – French, Italian, German, Spanish (Castilian and Latin American), Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, and Tagalog. 

The presenter’s voice, as well as sound effects and original music, play a crucial role in holding a listener’s attention during a podcast, and this is certainly true of Haunted Places. Spotify advised that we could be creative in how we brought each language version to life rather than restricting ourselves too much to the original. The goal was for every episode to feel appropriate to each market while maintaining the spooky feel of the original.

We worked with our network of in-territory studios to create local versions of Haunted Places. Each studio selected local voice artists who could present the podcast in an atmospheric and engaging style that felt relevant to their final audiences. The translations for the different versions were also created with the nuances and differences of the individual territory in mind, making sure that the podcast was culturally relevant and giving our client multiple options to choose from when it made sense to do so. This close, collaborative way of working and sensitivity to the nature of the show resulted in the best possible translation in every territory – true localisation.

Our studio team in London had fun re-creating the M&E (music and effects) track for Haunted Places, to be used across all the localised versions. This was then provided to each of the in-territory studios to help streamline the mixing process.

We collaborated closely with Spotify throughout, maintaining open communication at all times on timelines and budgets, and creating a bespoke workflow that met their needs every step of the way.