How to find Japanese Translators and Voice Actors

[Darim]

Heyo Guys, can someone give me an advice where I can find ENG -> JP Translators and Japanese Voice Actors.

I thought I would find a few here on the forum but i don't until now.

So please Oshiete Kudasai

[AriaAi]

Hello,

Being a hobby voice actor myself, I've come to know a bit about the voice acting community online haha. There are a couple of sites you can probably recruit voice actors at.

There's a tumblr called Japanese Voice Acting (http://japanese-voice-acting.tumblr.com/). If you shoot them an ask or email about your game and how you're recruiting voice actors, they'll reach out to their talents (who are mostly voice acting as their hobby) and ask if they are interested (or anyone else who follows them). There's quite a range of voice actors here, but most of them happen to be female if I recall correctly. The last time I checked I believe there were only about 1-3 male voice actors, while the rest were females (though there were plenty of ryouseirui -basically can voice both parts- within the female party). Sure, they may not be the most fluent Japanese speakers/pronouncers, but it's useful if you're looking for voice actors.
They also do have people in the group who translate the scripts they give to their talents, so you can probably ask them if one of their translators would like to help you with your project as well.

There is also a Japanese site called Koebu (http://koebu.com/). Again, it's a hobby site for voice acting. Because it's a site for native Japanese people to practice and show off their voice acting, you'll get a pretty good range of voice actors. You can definitely message them and ask if they would like to voice act in your game. The only problem you might have here is that you have to know how to read and write Japanese in order to properly use the site. Because it's a full Japanese site, it'll be a little hard dealing with the site if you know little to no Japanese.

I do suggest getting farther in your game and finishing a proper script for the voice actors before you request voice actors though. It's a little frustrating when you get recruited to voice something, but the creator doesn't even have lines for you to record.

I hope I could be of help. Good luck. ^ q ^)/

[Darim]

Yes thank you very much your informations helped me a lot.

[hiko27]

Pretty sure I'm late to the party but as already mentioned, koebu is a goldmine imo. I haven't commissioned anybody there yet, but there's a whole lot you could choose from. They also have singers there. And as mentioned, it's in Japanese but you can pretty much just click from any of the categories on the top left. First is speech, next is songs, recitation, audio dramas and obviously, BGM. But you'll need someone who knows Japanese to talk to them. Well, not really. You can probably talk to them in English, but there's going to be a whole lot of miscommunication. There's also a few voice actors that have their own blogs. Haven't had that much luck looking for them. Usually for me though, aside from koebu, I lurk on nicovideo and look for utaites for songs I like. That's mostly for singers though, but nicovideo is also a good way to look for voice actors. But then, you gotta know a bit of Japanese to know what to type and all that.

For translators, the only places I've seen any is on Tumblr, but even then, it'll be hard to find someone who's willing to translate your game. You can try going to those sites where you get native speakers to correct your language. You can try those. But pretty much Tumblr, or you can probably go around to scanlation sites/subbing groups and look for translators, but we're mostly JP > ENG, not the other way around, but some have translators that can do ENG > JP. A few have passed the N1 test (meaning their knowledge of Japanese is on par with a native speaker). You can probably try looking up some professional Japanese translation services, but those are way more expensive I think.

[Darim]

@hiko27 thanks. Koebu is really a goldmine for japanese voice actors. My japanese is probably not good enough (passed N5 last year) to communicate with them so i will try it in english or find someone who can help me