Ahmed AlQotb Wants Egypt’s Voices to
Endure for Centuries to Come
By Kayla Bowles, July 30, 2023
Hello SOVAS readers, and thank you for taking the time to visit my column, Diary of A Voiceover Intern. Here, I intend to engage my evolving learning experience as an intern at the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS) through a series of conversations with voiceover professionals. I will engage SOVAS ambassadors, previous winners of the Voice Arts Awards, casting directors, talent agents and others in discussions about breaking into the voiceover industry and building a thriving career.
Enter: Ahmed AlQotb—Arabic voice actor, casting director, and founder of THE ARABIC VOICE™ studios. Ahmed provides the voiceover for Apple customer support IVR system in the Middle East, Turkish Airlines on-board announcements, and BMW Group on-board audio description among services for several other highly successful brands. As an international ambassador for SOVAS, Ahmed works to expand the voiceover market actors to reach Arabic voice actors all over the globe. I am so honored to have him as my guest today!
Kayla: Hello Ahmed, thanks so much for being here! My first question for you is: how did you get involved in the voiceover industry, and how did you hear of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences?
Ahmed: Two big questions! First of all, I would like to thank you for this interview, and yeah Kayla, you are starting with the big ones here. The story of why I started my voiceover career began back in 2005. I believed that I had promising talent as a voice performer as well as distinguished fine linguistic skills and tried to find my way as a radio host back then, as I didn’t realize that I already had the ability to kick off a new career path as a voiceover artist. After working for online radio, I started hosting my first live TV shows in November 2008.In 2010, I moved to another position in the news industry as TV reporter for Kuwait official TV from Cairo, ironically in English!
I had my first voices.com profile created in 2008, which was used only as a voice portfolio, not to audition or land jobs, and that was the status until November 2010 when I got a phone call from a studio in Paris who got my contact information from Voices.com. The producer was in panic as she explained that she needed voiceover recorded in standard Arabic for a set of corporate videos for a large restaurant chain group called Le Duff. She asked if I could deliver this by the next day at 10:00 AM, and I simply said: Yes, no problem! The next day I went to a nearby studio, listened carefully to the audio guide of the French names of all brands mentioned in the scripts, recorded the tracks, and sent them to Paris.
Through the next few weeks, I started thinking of creating a brand and a benchmark for voiceover and dubbing in Arabic language, wanting to make it the McDonald’s of Arabic voiceover services. After searching some domain name availabilities, I found that “thearabicvoice.com” was available and bought it immediately. The vital point in this experience was when I realized from the early beginnings that the biggest potential in my prospect markets lay over the language barrier, and that the localization industry is the biggest gateway to make a rapid impact in world markets and have a footprint in this growing new industry.
As for how I heard about Society of Voice Arts and Sciences, I believe that was back in 2016 when I saw a Facebook ad for the Voice Arts Awards and started following their activities knowing that this is going to be a pivotal move to establish professional standards for the industry. There were no categories for solely Arabic entries back then, I thought: “why not join this all new experience as a judge, maybe they could be interested to have someone from the other side of the world!”
Kayla: It’s so incredible that you created a brand that not only helped you to further your own career, but also cast a spotlight on Arabic voiceover as a whole. If you can, could you describe the culture surrounding voiceover in Egypt? Is it a career path that the average person is familiar with?
Ahmed: Well, in Egypt, and until first decade of this century, voiceover was not a distinguished profession, and not being considered as a career in itself. More than 90% of voiceover jobs were produced for TV commercials and promos. Some minor recordings were being recorded by TV and radio hosts as narrators, but dubbing markets were not as large and expanding as they are now. Some other interactive forms of voiceover performance produced for genres like IVR or audio guides barely existed or recognized in the Arab world.
As for now, and since a few years ago, voiceover acting has emerged into a new distinguished career path and began establishing its own professional cultures between fresh grads and new talents. The growing need for new kinds of performance like interactive voiceover acting, corporate narration, character animation and audiobooks created new market demands for voice acting talents which contributed to grow the voiceover industry and driving the market into new level of maturity in Egypt.
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From the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences
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Kayla: You provided the voice for Turkish Airlines on-board announcements and services for a number of other prominent companies including Nissan and Apple. Were these jobs that you auditioned for, or did you come across them a different way?
Ahmed: Most of them were acquired through our localization partners around the world, some I auditioned for through P2P sites like Voice123, and some others were casting agents or studios reached out to me through THE ARABIC VOICE website. For example, we got the Turkish Airline project from a localization company in Russia and worked for Apple through a casting agent in Netherlands and a voice bank in NY. With some clients like Apple, as I record in a foreign language for them, an audition was not even enough. Imagine that I have recorded my first IVR batch for them (50 minutes of final recorded audio) in a live-directed session where I had a representative from Apple calling-in from California and listening to the whole recording! It was such a challenge, and an achievement at the same time, when your client listens for more than an hour of recording in a different language, and you keep him satisfied and end the session happily.
Kayla: Just out of curiosity, what do you find comes easiest to you in terms of types of voiceovers (commercials, e-learning, narration, etc.)? What do you find most challenging? And why?
Ahmed: The easiest type of voice acting to me is e-learning, maybe because the archetype I use is very close to my genuine personality. Most challenging types would be promos and trailers, may be because my voice type, I know I’m not a trailer voice despite that I’ve already done promos for Cartoon Network, but maybe that’s why my voice is not a perfect fit for epic-style voice acting we usually hear in trailers and some promos.
Kayla: That’s so interesting. I’ve gotten to a point in my own training where I’m able to identify what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I definitely agree that my personality informs those areas of strength. Now, what do you think is the most important thing for someone breaking into voiceover, specifically someone in the non-English speaking market, to know?
Ahmed: Two things: first, they must be able to recognize their talent and define their power points; secondly, voiceover is a performing art that is now being conducted as a freelance job in an open market and exchanged cross cultures, so an independent voiceover artist in our time must recognize the fact that they are standing right on the language barrier between nations, and that their job is to empower communication and mutual understanding between different cultures.
Kayla: That’s such a powerful way of viewing voiceover. It’s not only a method of storytelling; voice actors—especially non-English speaking or multi-lingual voice actors—have to be capable of communicating effectively with various cultures. My final question for you is: How do you feel about ensuring that the voices of Egypt have a place in the global voiceover culture?
Ahmed: Having a place in the global voiceover culture for Egyptian (and by turn for Arabic speaking) voices, is by all measures a turning point in the history of this industry on Arabian and African plateau. From one side, this is going to move the Egyptian community of voice professionals into a more mature and well-established industry, as a result of exchanging know-how, and getting inspired by the deep-rooted experience, regulations, and ecosystem in the international markets.
And on the other side, as the most populous country in Arab world and North Africa, when the voices of Egypt merge into the global voiceover culture, this is going to lead to a large-scale elevation to several industries like the localization industry, providing the world with more authentic performers of characters, machines, bots and audio-visual materials in native tongue, it will also morph the voiceover culture into a truly diverse inter-communicating small world of performers, may be the same happens when Japanese, Bahasa, or Mandarin voices join, however, speaking of the Arabic language and its local accents is something different, as Arabic is the language spoken in the very middle region of the world, truly in the heart, and in the most sophisticated transportation and communication node, keeping in mind that it is still being written, read and spoken in the same intact form for more than 10 centuries till today! …And Egypt lies in the heart of the heart of this whole panoramic snap image of global history and nations.
Kayla: Thank you again for talking with me, Ahmed! Before we wrap up, is there anything you’d like to add?
Ahmed: I’m the one who has to thank you, Kayla! I can’t find the words to express my gratitude for the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences for all what it does to empower and support the voice acting community all over the globe.
Kayla Bowles is assistant to Rudy Gaskins and Joan Baker, founders of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences (SOVAS), creators of That’s Voiceover! Career Expo, and the Voice Arts Awards. She currently studies the art of voice acting with Joan Baker, and has studied with Real Voice L.A., The Acting Studio, and Broadway Evolved. Though new to the voiceover business, Kayla has already booked a local TV commercial, a role in an indie animated series (in development), and lent her voice to various passion projects. She is currently an undergrad at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY.
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