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¿CÓMO SE DICE KINGDOM COME?: VOXONIC

By Markkus Rovito, 1/1/2007 12:00PM

If at some point you hear a track that sounds like a German doing a perfect Jay-Z impersonation, don't start looking online for concert tickets in Berlin. That really is Jay-Z… sort of. A developing technology called Voxonic can take audio vocal recordings and translate them into any language. The trick is that you don't get a corny computerized voice for the translation; you get what sounds just like the original speaker.

Voxonic works by first taking a spoken-voice sample of about 10 minutes from the “target” voice (the voice that will be re-created). Then a second speaker records the same words from the target's 10-minute vocal sample. This person is the “source” voice, meaning the person who will speak in another language. From there, Voxonic creates a “voiceprint” of the target that can be laid over anything the source voice says to make it sound like another person said the words.

The company started out a few years ago being used for corporate communications and film dubbing, so that translated voices for the foreign market would sound like the original actors. However, last year the founder of Voxonic, Fred Deutsch, randomly met Andre Harrell, a music mogul who founded Uptown Records and broke Mary J. Blige's career. Since then the two have formed a partnership aimed at spreading hip-hop and other music even further around the world using Voxonic to translate hot rhymes into flawless French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Russian and other languages.

All the evidence shows that Voxonic is serious and making progress. Last September, the company hired Edward “Eddie F“ Ferrell as executive director of production — an in-house producer/mixer for Voxonic. Ferrell has worked with Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Heavy D, Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, Destiny's Child, Run-DMC and others.
While Voxonic stays reticent about whom it's working with, it's likely that in 2007, artists from Roc-A-Fella Records, Blige and others will be using Voxonic to gain further exposure worldwide. In late 2006, Jay-Z and Russell Simmons used Voxonic to translate a public service announcement aimed at combating anti-semitism into several languages.

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