Museum audio guides in English

How to provide an audio guide in English

An English guide is the one you build first, because everything else is derived from it. Write the stops, record them, publish them behind a QR code beside the object, and the guide is live. There is no app for the visitor to download and no hardware to hand out, so the operational cost of running it is close to nothing once it exists.

The part worth slowing down on is the script itself. A stop written in plain, unambiguous English is cheaper to translate, produces fewer translator queries, and reads better aloud. Time spent here is repaid in every language you add afterwards.

• Write the stops in plain English, naming things before using them
• Record them, or have them narrated, and listen to the result end to end
• Publish behind a QR code beside the object, with no app for the visitor
• Lock the script before commissioning any translation, since edits after that are paid for in every language

What English asks of your layout

English is the source text for every other language you publish, so its length sets the budget for all of them.

Because English is usually the shortest version of a stop, a layout that only just fits the English text will break once translations arrive.

Plain English is a language decision too

English-language visitors are not one audience. A guide written for someone who already knows the period, the technique, and the local place names will lose a visitor who knows none of them, and heritage writing drifts towards the former without anyone deciding to.

The useful discipline is to name things before using them, expand an acronym the first time, and keep sentence length down. That also makes the script far cheaper to translate, because ambiguous English is what generates translator queries.

Getting the English narration right

Recording in English is the one stage where a museum can hear the result and judge it directly, which makes it the best place to settle questions of pace, tone, and pronunciation before any translation is voiced.

• New Zealand English is the natural register for a New Zealand venue, and visitors notice when it is not.
• Māori place names and terms need correct pronunciation, and this is the most common failure in generic narration.
• Decide early whether te reo Māori terms are translated, glossed, or left to stand on their own.

Where English sits in your language plan

Across the New Zealand museums using Journey Pal, between 50% and 60% of guide use is in English. That is our own usage data rather than an industry estimate, and it consistently surprises museums that think of an audio guide as a translation product first.

Local-language listening is the largest single share of use, because audio is easier while walking and while looking, and it carries tone that a wall label cannot. A strong English guide serves the largest group immediately and gives every translation a solid source text to work from.