Perfect Dutch with VDAB’s pronunciation app

The Vlaamse Dienst voor Arbeidsbemiddeling en Beroepsopleiding (VDAB) is Flanders’ employment service and helps jobseekers find a job. They do this by means of a jobsite with a wide range of offers, providing training and guiding people in their search for work. Moreover, VDAB is actively involved in renewing the labour market and highlighting the latest work trends.

Striving for perfection

VDAB launched the ‘Uitsprekend’ app to increase the chances of foreign-language speakers finding employment. The app allows users to improve their Dutch through multiple-choice questions, speaking and listening exercises. After careful revision, VDAB decided the app needed to be renewed. VDAB’s speech therapists pointed out that many of the recorded fragments were not perfectly pronounced. Since ‘Uitsprekend’ is mainly used by non-native speakers learning Dutch, it is extremely important that every word is pronounced correctly. VDAB turned to Untranslate to help them with this challenge.

A voice in a million

We regularly work closely with various professional voice actors. For this assignment, our project manager searched for the perfect match between voice actor and assignment. In consultation with VDAB, we finally opted for Serge, a voice actor, with a reliable, smooth and contemporary sound and more than 20 years of experience in the profession.

High-quality recordings

Before Serge could start on the 503 audio fragments that had to be recorded, VDAB had another important requirement. The recordings had to take place under the careful supervision of two speech therapists. By ensuring that the speech therapists could supervise the voice actor live, we were able to deliver quality recordings in beautiful and correct Dutch.

“Working with Untranslate was a great experience. As a voice actor for this online Dutch course, I really appreciated the professionalism of the team. They knew exactly what they needed and what they wanted. That made the process very efficient. Despite the high demands, we were able to successfully complete the audio recordings in just a short period of time. I look forward to working with Untranslate again in the future.”

SERGE  I Voice actor

Challenges

This project also had a few atypical tasks. For some audio clips, we had to provide mouth images, which are close-up videos of the voice actor’s mouth. After all, a short video clip in which a word is clearly articulated is an added value for people learning Dutch. So in addition to the 503 audio clips, there were also some video clips with the same high quality requirements.

An app on point

The app ‘Uitsprekend’ received a complete makeover. By ensuring that the new audio clips were linguistically sound, we complemented the client and the voice actor perfectly. And by teaching non-native speakers to speak Dutch fluently through the app, we increase their chances of finding a job. This success story opened the door to regular and smooth cooperation with VDAB.