These words get swapped daily, including by people in the industry. They describe distinct techniques with very different constraints and very different difficulty.
You replace the voice of a character visible on screen. The original voice disappears entirely, the music and effects stay. Your line must land when the mouth moves and stop when it stops.
It is the most demanding technique because it stacks two conflicting constraints: act truthfully, and fit a fixed window. It is also the only one that creates the illusion the character actually speaks your language.
A voice whose source is not shown. A documentary narrator, a character's inner thought, an advert's commentary. Nobody speaks on screen, so no lip sync is required.
The difficulty moves elsewhere: it is entirely in tone and pacing. Nothing anchors you, everything rests on you.
The translated voice sits on top of the original, which remains audible underneath at a lower level. This is what you hear in news reports and interviews: the source language is still perceptible under the translation.
It only requires starting shortly after the speaker and finishing roughly with them. It is far cheaper than dubbing, which is why it dominates television.
| Your intent | The technique |
|---|---|
| Make a film or anime character speak with my voice | Dubbing |
| Comment on footage, explain, narrate | Voice over |
| Translate an interview while keeping the original audible | UN style |
| Add a joke on top of an existing video | Voice over, unless you want to replace the dialogue |
The deciding question is simple: do you want the original voice gone? If yes, that is dubbing, and it has to be removed without taking the music with it. If no, it is voice over, and the original audio stays.
Dubba is a dubbing tool. It strips the original voices, keeps music and effects, transcribes the dialogue with its timing and shows a rythmo band to keep you on the frame. For plain voice over, any editor will do: there is nothing to separate.
Dub a videoDubbing replaces a visible character's voice and requires lip sync. Voice over has no visible source and no sync constraint.
A translated voice over the original, still audible underneath. The documentary technique.
Dubbing, clearly: truthful acting inside a fixed time window.
For dubbing yes, for voice over no.
Yes. The room matters more than the microphone.