Stage fright?

It is fascinating to find myself today plagued by a kind of anxiety which is very similar to stage fright.

Readers will be well aware that I endeavour to earn my living not only by translating from German to English but also by voiceover recording. Given that I have a good many years of experience, neither or these activities are in any way daunting... simply jobs to be done.

But the phone rang a couple of days ago and I was asked to attend a voice casting for a dubbing project.

Dubbing... the synchronization with the speech of actors in a foreign language... is a very different skill in comparison with the non-synchronous recording of narration.  It is something I have rarely been asked to do. Ironically I have been on the other side of the desk, as it were, I have supervised dubbing sessions a few times, directing the performances of voice talent. Funnily enough, that experience was gained in the Berlin studios of the same dubbing specialist firm, FFS; in whose Munich branch this afternoon's casting will take place.

So later today we shall see if I can handle the challenge... the call is for very 'British English' and for German with  possibly horrible English accent!

But the whole thing becomes even more exciting for me. The job would be to voice one of the players in the film Gemma Bovery. Now this is a movie adaptation of a graphic novel or cartoon strip by Posy Simmonds. Her work contributed greatly to my enjoyment of The Guardian newspaper as far back as the seventies and eighties. Add, if you will, the fact that the film was made in France. These two facts very much hit significant personal buttons!

What fun it would be to be involved.