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Please improve the voice acting

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#1

After coming back to CPod after a long hiatus, I’ve noticed a real difference in the voice acting (other than that we have different actors now). Not only are there many more mistakes being made by the actors (and included in the recording for some reason), but the dialogues just sound so much more boring, flat and unnatural. Very much like they are being read for only the first or second time during recording.

CPod, please consider hiring a director and having the actors memorize and rehearse their lines. Since many of us utilize CPod by listening to dialogues over and over it would be valuable to have better voice acting to help the words sink. Research shows that brains are more responsive to words perceived as naturally spoken rather than read from a page. As quality audio is the backbone of the CPod brand, I hope CPod will take this seriously.

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#2

Hi @zhoudage do you have any examples of where you particularly notice this? I listen to the lessons every day during my studies and never thought that the voice acting was poor, it seemed pretty natural and prefer that instead of over acting . You aren’t the only person to mention the voice acting so I was just curious what I may be missing.

#3

Hey, appreciate the response, although I was hoping to get someone who works at CPod’s attention. Not sure that I can provide particular examples without going to great lengths to splice and post some recordings.

That being said, what I’m talking about is generally how the voice actors are not very familiar with their lines. Ideally, they would memorize their lines and try to deliver them as if a real conversation was occurring. The two main problems with reading from a page rather than acting out the dialogue are: 1) Being read to does not engage the human brain as well as conversation, hence reading to a child puts them to sleep, while talking to a driver keeps them awake; 2) When lines are read instead of acted, you don’t actually hear how native speakers would say the sentence in real life. Reading changes the cadence, emphasis, verbal chunking, and concatenation that makes conversation sound so much different than reading aloud.

Obviously, none of us want to switch from reading to over-acting. But, surely there is a happy medium to be had.

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#4

My issue is that the number of voices coming out of the Taiwan office is much lower than from the old Shanghai office. Taiwan seems to be a skeleton crew (probably an overworked one) and the dialogues seem to be read by the hosts.

One solution (and I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet) would be to hire a set of actors (2-3 males, 2-3 females) for a limited period of time and record several months worth of dialogues en masse.

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#5

I’m not sure they need to increase the number of actors. I think it would be more beneficial for them to give the actors they do have more time to get familiar with their lines, and more direction to make them sound natural.

But yes, judging from the lack of interaction on the lesson comment sections, it does seem to me that the Taiwan business is operated by a skeleton crew. That is also too bad… I didn’t realize how nice it was having CPod staff members reading and interacting routinely on comment sections. I have yet to get a response from CPod on a single comment I’ve made since I’ve come back. This is probably why there are so very few comments on any given lesson now.

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#6

I’m sorry you feel that way @zhoudage. I will pass this information on to the voice talents next time they are due to do a batch recording. It would be great if you could find a particular lesson where you thought they we particularly lackluster and I can show it to them for comparison. It’s true the academic department (based in Taiwan) is much smaller than before. Us 3-5 members do the job of almost 20+ previous emplyess but we still try to get a new lesson out for each level each week including lots of video lessons that we feel are very beneficial for learners. In terms of commenting, we try to do our best to reply to language related questions, although this forum was specifically created for user-moderated discussion as well. If you have a particular question not related to language learning, it’s best to contact our customer service team at support@chinespod.com.

Let me know if there are any lesson topics you would like discussed.

#9

@zhoudage sorry that the post became locked. I have copied your reply below.

Thanks!

Side note: someone already took the time to tell me to “pipe down” on a lesson comment section because I’m “whining,” so I’m fully aware that not everyone agrees with my stance, but let’s please make the discussion something constructive.

EDIT: The two lessons I would suggest are lackluster in voice acting are “民族之光” and “别来无恙.” But, honestly, the problem is pretty ubiquitous.

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#10

Different people have different styles and different voices,
and plenty of people like it, plenty don’t, so if you do not like it,
I suggest you don’t use it.

#11

In fact, I find the current voice actors an improvement. However, I only listen to elementary and some intermediate. At first after the move I thought they were speaking a little too quickly for elementary and I feel they have consiously made the effort to slow done just a bit (I don’t think my listening has improved that fast :grin:).

For example in the recent lesson about sweets when the second girl says "好特别“。 haha so funny. I think many other lessons have seemed a bit more animated.

As an aside I wish more of the lessons were video. The visual aides you have been adding during the video lessons are very helpful.

I also like that now in the dialog only download you have all three repetitions.

#12

I also think the voice acting is generally good and the conversation animated. It would be great to add some diversity of Chinese accents and voices of different ages both older and younger.

I have a comment on the intros to the lessons, which often start with a big “Hi” and the English names of the presenters - for the upper intermediate and advanced lessons it might help maintain the illusion of a Chinese language environment if they started with a greeting in Chinese and the Chinese names of the presenters at least for those who regularly use a Chinese name.

#13

I agree with mezzodelcammin

#14

I agree as well, I have found the voice acting from the Taiwan office pretty lackluster.

#15

like the 高考 advanced lesson dialogue sounds contrived and uninteresting, like they are reading from a piece of paper

#16

I have previously made some comments on the lesson pages about fluffed or not very natural sounding lines, but I hope that what all the actors take away from my and other peoples criticisms is not discouragement but rather that their contriubtion is a very important part of the lesson. When a line is delivered in a natural sounding way it really can lodge in the memory (and I appreciate it must be hard to sound natural and at the same time meet the requirements of clarity and not speaking too fast). I think the recent “Zhu Ziqing’s Essay” dialog is a good example. I was testing myself on my recent vocab and I had a moment’s doubt about whether the word I was trying to remember should be 复返 or 反复, but when I thought back to it in context I could still hear the line “我们的日子为什么一去不复返” in my head exactly as it had been recorded. The general trend I can see is that the acting is improving, I just want the actors to keep striving for excellence and not to do things in a rush or settle for second best because they are thinking their part is less important than the teaching. 加油！

#17

Wait wait wait! You’re telling us you cut the staff by at least 75% and haven’t decreased your prices? How come???

#18

Thanks for your reply. Sadly I’m not involved with the pricing of the product. Having said that, the total team is just as big, and the total lesson library is growing every day so that is why some of the reason why the subscription price remains the same. If you’re due for a renewal, we can always offer you a voucher code.

#19

I also agree with the above.
The voice acting isn’t accurate and the lessons are riddled with mistakes.

#20