Looking to boost your YouTube channel viewership? Dubbing is one of the best and easiest ways to increase engagement and make a YouTube video that reaches and attracts a wider, international audience.
Dubbing is the process of creating a new spoken audio track for a video in a different language and adding it to the original video as a replacement for the original speaker’s voice. It’s a key piece of content creation that has been shown to drive higher engagement and viewership, longer watch times, better audience retention, and boost SEO rankings.
Which Dubbing Style Works for You?
There are over 500 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute across 80 languages in more than 100 countries around the world. With 2.49 billion monthly logged-in users, there are a lot of YouTube viewers interested in what you have to say. It’s up to content creators to find the right way to say it.
To help creators do just that, YouTube announced a couple of content localization options in 2023, including support for dubbed, multi-language audio tracks and the ability to automatically dub videos into other languages using artificial intelligence (AI).
Though AI dubbing may save time, content creators need to consider whether AI alone can create dubbed versions that match the style and tone of your original content.
AI dubbing can work well for certain types of content. If your videos have a single, clear voiceover, there are some great synthesized dubbing solutions that will produce strong results – and they’re getting better every day. But, for content where there’s lots of people talking – either over each other or with strong accents or on niche topics – it can be harder for AI to cope.
It’s also worth thinking about the tone and energy of your original video. It’s important that your dubbed version reflects the same creative approach that attracted followers to your original content. That’s easily done with AI if your videos are formal or even conversational but a little trickier if your content is more…energetic.
Another item to consider is that word-for-word translation of content doesn’t always work well for video dubs. Expressions, idioms, and cultural references specific to your language or region will need to either be removed from your script or adapted to capture the culture of your target audience. This is called transcreation – and it’s not something that AI can tackle just yet.
For example, rather than literally translating expressions like “when pigs fly,” you’ll want to replace it with a local idiom or adjust the script to simply say something “will never happen” to ensure that the correct meaning is translated in all languages.
Choose a YouTube Recommended Vendor
So where does this leave the debate between AI and traditional dubbing techniques? The good news is that you don’t need to choose because the best option is generally a combination of the two. What’s more important is making sure that your dubbed content reflects the unique creative approach that enabled you to gain so many followers to your channel in the first place.
That’s why it pays to work with an expert provider like VITAC, a YouTube Recommended Vendor, that has experience helping YouTubers and other content creators ensure pitch-perfect translations in every market. We offer a wide range of English and multi-language dubbing and localization services that live up to the original production. Our services are underpinned by high-quality translations and supported by an international network of partner studios and a vast pool of creative talent.
With more than 35 years of media and entertainment industry experience, we can help walk you through the content localization process. Check out our short video below that highlights some of the items you’ll want to consider before dubbing your project.