Audio guides for global audiences

Museums today have access to a variety of resources for enriching the visitor experience. Whether it’s brochures, interactive touchscreens, VR headsets or audio guides – the curation of the experience as a whole has become pivotal to securing stable footfall and creating a buzz. Visitors want to deep dive into the life of the artist and their work. Alongside this trend, we have seen an evident shift in visitor demographics over the decades, with tourism and immigration undeniably diversifying audiences.

Indeed, when speaking about the National History Museum’s record-breaking 7.1 million visitors in 2025, VisitBritain CEO Patricia Yates recently commented: “Our wonderful museums are powerful motivators for travel for both domestic and international visitors […]. Every year millions of people come to Britain drawn by our first-class heritage and cultural attractions […].”

So how can we cater to these shifts and empower visitors from across the globe to truly immerse themselves in the exhibits laid before them?

Visitors bring different background knowledge with them: The average Asian tourist is unlikely to be acquainted with the likes of William Turner or Tracey Emin, who are household names in the UK. In contrast, most Brits are oblivious to the teachings of Confucianism, a standard feature in the Chinese school curriculum. All this to say that our pre-existing knowledge that we bring into the museum experience is greatly shaped by our cultural norms and upbringing. It is such differences that we need to bear in mind when preparing visitor resources.

Audio guides present a highly effective method for engaging audiences. Able to cover a long list of languages without the need for time slots, they are a fantastic accessibility tool. In terms of the spoken script, audio guides shouldn’t just deliver neatly packed facts and figures that are quickly forgotten once you’ve exited the museum. When visitors opt for a guide, it’s because they want the details that make the exhibition come to life, giving them the knowledge they don’t yet have to understand an artist’s reasoning, technique or narrative.

When it comes to offering multiple languages, a strict translation of your audio guide script will give you consistency across the resources, but it will fail to fill those gaps in knowledge amongst visitors from abroad, who perhaps have not yet had the chance to learn about a certain artistic movement or time in your local history.

As innately curious creatures, humans seek a connection with the exhibition and if this is achieved, we’re far more likely to talk about what we’ve seen, creating that all-important word-of-mouth. This connection looks differently for different groups of visitors. This is where the concept of localisation comes in – tweaking your content to suit different audiences.

In practice, what this looks like is adding in explanations and extra background information, drawing comparisons and making ties with visitors’ own culture. Lending the translated script that extra piece of information to ensure visitors from abroad don’t simply understand the language but also the context.

Below we give some examples of how this can be implemented in the translation process

Example 1:     
British artist Damien Hirst, who has provoked controversy by preserving animals such as sheep, sharks and cows in formaldehyde in his works, hails from the southwestern city of Bristol, which is home to many works by the equally provocative artist Banksy.

Hirst and his controversy are already well known in the UK, as is the location of Bristol. When catering to foreign audiences, we can offer up details to close a discrepancy in background knowledge and give the listener interesting titbits about the local area. After all, tourists who choose to spend their limited time at heritage sites are there to learn more about the culture.

Example 2:     
For most of his life, Laurence Stephen Lowry, who became famous for his depictions of northern England’s smoggy industrial scenes dotted with distinctive matchstick figures, was not a full-time painter. Indeed, much like Henri Rousseau (commonly known as Le Douanier), Lowry worked a normal day job. It was only in his late 50s that Lowry was able to fully dedicate his time to his art.

Lowry’s motifs don’t require much introduction in his homeland. If we were translating an audio guide script for, say, a French audience however, it would be interesting to offer some insight. It would also be fair to draw a parallel to renowned French artist Henri Rousseau, who was nicknamed the Le Douanier (The Customs Officer) after his job as a tax collector and who only really took to painting in his 40s. By localising the text in this way for the French spectator, we’re bridging a cultural gap and enriching the visitor experience.

Translating for the arts and heritage sector demands a good grasp of art terminology, genuine vision and a flair for meaningful storytelling. Literal, word-for-word translations will fail to strike up the same emotions and inspiration as creative, out-of-the-box thinking. And as we’ve outlined above, historical, geographical and cultural references may require adjustment for foreign audiences. A quality translation provider takes this into account and may lead discussions around your objectives in this respect to ensure you get exactly what you want from the translations.

First Edition Translations is a certified translation agency based in Cambridge, UK. Bringing four decades of expertise in the cultural and creative industries to the table, we help museums, galleries and publishers worldwide cater to new audiences through the translation, localisation, copyediting, proofreading, and typesetting for art books, exhibition catalogues, museum guides and, of course, audio guides. We are honoured to collaborate with institutions such as:

• The Louvre Abu Dhabi
• The National Museum of Oman
• The British Museum
• Talbot Rice Gallery
• The Royal Collection Trust
• Tate Modern
• The Van Gogh Museum
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• The National Gallery

If you are looking to offer a more meaningful visitor experience and enhance your organisation’s status and footfall, simply reach out to our multilingual project managers at enquiries@firstedit.co.uk. We are always happy to answer questions and give advice.