Japanese Voice-Over Agency, Artists & Talent

Japanese voice-over production made simple

As an established Japanese International voice-over agency, Matinée Multilingual has been providing a professional Japanese Voice-Over Service and Japanese Subtitling Service for over 25 years. We offer a selection of the very best Japanese voice-over talent, at a price you can afford.

Whether for documentary, advertising, eLearning, or IVR, we’ll help you select the best Japanese voice-over talent for the job. We can record wild or sync to picture, and deliver the audio back in the file format of your choice, same day, via FTP. We can also lay-back the audio onto your video, and re-work the captions where necessary.

To calculate voice-over fees and recording costs click here. You will also find a lot of technical information here on our FAQs page.

To check the availability of our voice-artists and to confirm costs, please contact us using the quick Quote form opposite, and we'll respond within one hour. Or you can email project@matinee.co.uk or call on +44(0)118 958 4934.

Featured Japanese Voiceover Talent

Chikako

Chikako is a native female Japanese voiceover artist, born in Tokyo with a neutral accent. She has many years experience in Japanese narration, e-Learning, commercials and characters. Read more...

Dait

Dait is a male Japanese voiceover artist who originally trained at Rose Buford College in London and Philippe Gaulier in France. Since then he has become a highly experienced Japanese voice artist and actor. Read more...

Oki

Oki is a professional male Japanese voiceover artist. His tone is warm, yet resonant and he has recorded countless corporate and narrative Japanese voice-overs for us. Read more...

Reiko

Reiko is a Japanese voiceover artist with over 25 years experience as a professional TV & radio broadcaster, narrator & character Japanese voice talent. She has voiced countless commercials for major brands. Read more...

Japanese voice-over selection and quick quote in just 1 hour

1. browse the voice-over demos below and click PLAY to audition each casting sample
2. choose the voice(s) you like and click ADD to your Quick Quote, or DOWNLOAD a copy
3. complete the Quick Quote and we’ll check availability and costs, with a response in just 1 hour

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Japanese lip-sync dubbing for safety training videos

As a leading Japanese voice-over agency, Matinée were selected to provide Japanese lip-sync dubbing services for a series of corporate safety training videos. We first adapted the supplied Japanese scripts for lip-sync recording, which involved not only making the script shorter, but also making it better match the lip movements of the actors. We cast two female Japanese voice artists that sounded similar to the American actors. Recorded time-sync to picture, then mixed and mastered the audio.

We were also required to encode the videos in both FLV and MP4 format, matching the clients strict specifications for file size and bit-rate to ensure it worked flawlessly in their eLearning platform.

A short history of the Japanese language

Experts are unsure about the early origins of the Japonic language family. Although written Japanese has been heavily influenced by Chinese, the spoken language isn’t related to any other languages. The most popular theory is that it is part of the Ural-Altaic family, along with Turkish, Mongolian and Korean.

The development of the language is usually split into the following periods:

Old Japanese (up to 1000 BCE) – during this time Japanese was considerably influenced by Chinese, through the spread of Buddhism.

Middle Japanese (1000 – 1700 BCE) – while the written language became more standardised, different dialects developed throughout the country. After the capital moved from Kyoto to Tokyo in 1292, the Tokyo dialect became the spoken standard. Contact with the Portuguese at the end of the 16th century had a significant influence on the language; the Portuguese also compiled the first Japanese dictionary.

Modern Japanese (from 1700 BCE onwards) – when the American Admiral Perry visited Japan in 1868, he introduced the Japanese to English and other Western languages, and so began a flow of new loanwords. Read more

Which countries have Japanese as a national language?

Japanese has no actual official status in Japan, but is the country’s de facto national language.

How many people speak Japanese as their first language?

Around 130 million people speak Japanese as their first language, making it the ninth most commonly spoken native language in the world. The vast majority of these live in Japan, although there are significant communities of people in the United States, Brazil, Canada and Australia who speak Japanese as their first language.

It is spoken widely as a second language in Korea, Taiwan, parts of China and the Philippines – a hangover from Japanese occupation of this region during the Second World War.

Did you know…

The Japanese writing system uses three different character sets: kanji (Chinese characters – around 40% of modern Japanese characters are based on these), hiragana and katakana. The latter two together are known as kana, and consist of 46 characters each.
There are still many different dialects spoken in Japan. Some of the dialects used in the more isolated regions – such as Kagoshima – can be unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country. The language spoken on the Ryūkyū islands is considered different enough by experts to be a separate branch of the Japonic language family.
Different words and expressions are used in different social contexts, to reflect relative social positions (eg jobs, age), depending on who is speaking to whom. An honorific form of the language (keigo) is still commonly used in very formal situations.

The Japanese economy

The Japanese economy is the third largest in the world by nominal GDP. Japan is the world’s third largest manufacturer of automobiles, and has the largest electronics goods industry, with a focus on high-tech products.

Japan has few natural resources, so most of the raw materials necessary for its manufacturing industries are imported. Japan has one of the lowest rates of food self-sufficiency of all industrialised countries, importing around 60% of its food. Rice and fish are notable exceptions.

Japan is a member of the G8 and the World Trade Organisation.

Japanese voiceover recording for Toys R Us

Toys “R” Us was founded in America and is a retailer for kids’ toys and baby products. Their toy stores are now found all over the world, and they’ve been in the industry for over 65 years.

In Japan the Toys “R” Us brand focuses primarily on building customer loyalty, they depend on repeat customers, in part due to the low birth rate in Japan. This makes quality localisation extremely important.

The ‘Power Clix’ magnet blocks, is a toy that allows its customers to build and create shapes with their magnetic connecting blocks. The commercial required a youthful, energetic and child friendly native Japanese voice-over artist. Chikako –was the perfect match.

The client was delighted with the voice over in Japanese and the commercial was broadcast on television and online in Japan. 15.12.16