How to Create an Audio Guide From a PDF Brochure

You don't need an app to create an audio guide. If your museum, town or visitor center already has a PDF brochure, most of the text is there: you split it into stops, rewrite it for the ear and turn it into audio files, one per stop, in your visitors' languages. Here are the steps, a sample script and the Fynqcast workflow.

What do you need before you start?

• The texts you already have: the brochure, the leaflet, the gallery panels, as PDF, Word or plain text.
• The route: the list of stops in the order visitors reach them.
• A place to play the files: for example a page on your website, with a sign and a QR code at each stop.
• The rights to the text: if an agency wrote the brochure, or it quotes other authors, check that you can reuse it in audio form.

How do you turn a brochure into a script for listening?

A brochure is written for the eye; a listener stands in front of an object and can't skip back. Five rules help:

1. One stop, one file. Keep each stop short. If there is a lot to say, split it in two.
2. Start with what people can see. "In front of you", "on your left": the voice guides the eye.
3. Cut what doesn't work out loud. Prices, opening hours that change, phone numbers and lines like "see photo on page 6".
4. Write it the way it's said. "16th–17th c." becomes "the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries"; spell out abbreviations.
5. End with directions. The last sentence tells visitors where to go for the next stop.

Example: from brochure to script

The museum and the family are fictional. Here is the brochure text:

Room 3. Ceramics (16th–17th c.). Tableware of the Hartley family, found in 1987 during restoration work at Hartley House (see photo p. 6). Opening hours and admission p. 12.

And here is the same stop, rewritten for the Millbrook Town Museum audio guide:

You are in the ceramics room. In front of you, in the central case, are the plates and jugs the Hartley family used at their table in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were found in 1987, during restoration work on their house, just a short walk from here. Look at the largest plate: the same crest, an ear of wheat, appears on every piece. When you're ready, take the door on your right. Stop four is the coin room.

About 80 words: well under a minute. Same facts, new order and point of view.

How to do it with Fynqcast

Audio guides are made in FYNQ Studio, included in the FYNQ Studio, Publisher and Enterprise plans.

1. Open the Studio tab in your dashboard and choose the Tourism & Guides category.
2. Choose how to start. With PDF, DOCX or TXT you upload the brochure (up to 50 MB) and rework its text in the editor. With Paste your text you add a stop you've already rewritten. With Create with AI you fill in the place and its type (for example Museum or City walk) and paste the brochure text into Your information (takes precedence); at the Advanced level you also list the stops in route order. Always check the facts.
3. One file per stop. To get one audio per stop, create one production per stop.
4. Approve the text and pick a voice. Tick the box confirming you've reviewed the text, then choose a stock voice or your cloned voice. You can also give the voice an emotion.
5. Generate and download. You get the file as MP3 (or WAV and M4A) plus subtitles in SRT format.

Other languages. With Translate and read you paste the approved text, or load it from a file, then choose the original language and the language to read. Audio is available in English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic. In the translation settings you can list proper names to keep unchanged, such as "Hartley House", and add a glossary. Ideally, a native speaker checks it.

Your cloned voice. To clone your voice you must be an adult, hold an identity document issued by one of the 27 EU member states, pass identity verification and give your consent. You choose the languages it may speak when you create it. Every audio with a cloned voice opens with the spoken notice "Voice cloned with AI."

On the sign or the audio guide page, tell visitors that the voices are generated with artificial intelligence.

To find the plan that fits your stops and languages, see the pricing page.

Also worth reading:

• PDF to Audiobook With AI: How to Prepare Your File