Dubbing a podcast into German brings Jewish stories back home
Power of Babel turns Exile with Mandy Patinkin into Exil mit Iris Berben
Once in a blue moon, a project comes along that absolutely needs to exist. We got one of those this year from Antica Productions. They produced the excellent podcast EXILE, about Jewish life under Nazi rule, for the Leo Baeck Institue – New York | Berlin. We’ve had the privilege of dubbing it into German.
EXIL launches this week, on the first night of Hanukkah, in Berlin, and these 12 incredible stories will now be available in German.
This was very far from a typical dubbing job. First, we stripped away all the German-English translation, and went back to the original German diaries and letters (including Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s!). Then we re-interviewed all the native German speakers in the series in their own language. All this was done by our amazing German producer Isabella Kempf, who had also worked on Antica’s original English version.
In the meantime, Antica recruited a spectacular host, the German actress Iris Berben, who brought a real storytelling sensibility to the narration.
Then we assembled a wonderful talented cast of German voice performers, including Torontonians Adi Braun, Hanna Feldhaus Kent and Anja Meyer, LA-based Katharina Geringas (my cousin-in-law!), and some serious voiceover legends in Hamburg and Vienna. And finally we handled it all over to sound engineer Josko Kasten in Hamburg, who recreated the sound design, extending the music and sound effects to fit the much longer German dialogue.
