Fun fact: English isn’t as widely spoken as you may have thought. Of the 8 billion world population, only 1.46 billion — less than 20% speaks English.
Meaning, roughly 4 in 5 people across the global market are unable to understand 50% of the website content out there.
Imagine how much money that leaves on the table.
There’s a huge market opportunity just waiting to be tapped.
Netflix got the memo back in 2016. They started localizing their shows — adding subtitles, dubbing, and modifying the content in line with region-specific nuances — and expanded to 130 new markets.
The result? By year-end, Netflix’s international audiences surpassed their US subscribers, with their video localization efforts adding about 5.1 million new global subscribers.
If you’ve also been thinking of growing your global reach, video localization is just the answer. It involves making your content accessible to diverse audiences across different regions by:
- Adding subtitles in different languages
- Dubbing content using local voice actors
- Recreating parts or full videos to make them more culturally relevant
See how video localization can be as cost-effective as your budget allows? Let’s dive into the different ways to localize your video content and grow in international markets.
Jump to a specific section:
- Video localization vs. translations: What’s the difference?
- What are the benefits of video localization?
- What are the different methods of video localization?
- Best practices for video localization
[#TOC1]Video localization vs. translations: What’s the difference?[#TOC1]
Before we dig deeper, it’s essential to note that video translation is not the same as video localization. If anything, translating videos falls under the broader, more comprehensive process of localizing videos.
Essentially, video translation involves converting text from one language to another — often focusing on word-for-word accuracy. Its aim is simple: to communicate the message in a different language, without considering cultural nuances.
Video localization, on the other hand, aims to modify content to specific audiences’ cultural context and local preferences. This includes making tone changes, adjusting regional accents, and altering references, examples, and visuals to ensure the content resonates with and engages local viewers.
[#TOC2]What are the benefits of video localization?[#TOC2]
A well-executed localization project helps you engage global audiences and break into new markets.
Start by localizing high-impact videos that attract viewers from different regions, then scale to reap the following benefits:
Increased reach and engagement
Localized content breaks language barriers, opening your content to non-native speakers. Culturally adapting your content’s messaging, visuals, and tone also ensures it resonates with the new audience, boosting emotional connection and, ultimately, engagement.
Higher conversion rates
Content that feels native to the viewers — delivered in their language and aligning with their cultural sensitivities — quickly builds trust. This trust, in turn, translates into higher click-throughs and conversion rates.
Improved SEO and discoverability
Search engines index multilingual metadata and transcripts, helping your videos appear in local searches when users look for content in their native language. This boosts search rankings and visibility across different regions — driving more traffic and increasing brand discoverability.
Enhanced workforce training
Lastly, localizing your training videos to reflect region-specific language, visuals, and cultural context not only makes the content more accessible but also enhances message retention. It offers your global workforce a consistent learning experience, equipping all employees — regardless of their location — with the knowledge to excel in their roles.
[#TOC3]What are the different methods of video localization?[#TOC3]
Your video localization strategy can focus on one or more of these methods, depending on your resources, market expansion goals, and your target audience preferences.
Each method offers its benefits and challenges, and you can choose to execute them in-house or partner with experts for more specialized support:
1. Subtitling
Subtitling involves translating a video’s narrative in another language, adding the transcript as on-screen text to your videos.
It’s a quick and cost-effective method to localize content in multiple languages without having to create a new audio track or redo your original video.
Keep in mind though, subtitles aren’t the same as captions. Where subtitles transcribe a video’s spoken word, captions translate both the dialogue and background sounds to help you reach those who are hard of hearing.
Pro tip: Regardless of the video localization method you select, add subtitles to all your videos to engage the 75% of folks who watch social media videos on mute.
Here are some different ways you can translate and add subtitles to your videos:
Using an AI tool
Using an AI tool like VEED to add subtitles to your videos is a timesaving and budget-friendly way to localize videos in multiple languages.
Simply upload your video, select the new language you want to add subtitles in, and let VEED’s auto-subtitle generator do the work.
With nearly 95% accuracy, it also features a low-confidence word indicator that highlights potentially mis-transcribed words, making it easy to review and edit your transcripts for accuracy.
Manual subtitling
You can also enlist help from team members proficient in your target audience’s languages to add subtitles or even do it yourself.
Although not as time-efficient as AI subtitle localization, manual subtitling guarantees cultural accuracy as language experts ensure the cultural or linguistic context isn’t lost in direct translation.
Hiring an agency
Using specialized localization services is the most expensive option here but it ensures your subtitles are fully tailored to your audience’s values, sense of humor, and cultural references.
Nonprofits, international or governmental organizations, and companies in highly regulated industries like finance will find this method the safest to create error-free, compliant captions adjusted for local terminology.
2. Voiceover and dubbing
Also known as voice rerecording, voiceover and dubbing replace a video's original audio with a translated track in your intended audience’s target language.
The difference between the two, however, lies in the depth of the work.
Voiceover, for example, involves simply reading a translated script over the existing audio, making it a comparatively economical solution.
Dubbing, on the other hand, syncs the localized script with the characters’ lip movements and actions to preserve the tonal nuances and emotions in the original audio. This makes it far more immersive, therefore, more costly.
Either way, voice replacing takes quite some work so it’s generally more resource intensive than subtitling videos.
Here’s how to dub your video content:
Use an AI dubbing tool
AI dubbing lets you automatically add dubbed voiceovers to your video — using either a cloned voice of the original speaker or a natural-sounding stock voice. This speeds up the dubbing process, keeping it light on the pocket as well.
The best part? Advanced tools like VEED’s voice dubbing software also retain background noises in the dubbed audio track, offering an engaging user experience. What’s more, by enabling lip sync, you can match lip movements to the original speech, making the voiceover even more effective.
Hire a dubbing agency
Dubbing agencies handle the full process, from translating your video content to selecting and working with the right voiceover artists.
The result is high-quality dubbed videos that accurately replace the original audio, preserving not only the message but also the emotion for a fully immersive viewing experience.
Given the budget investment, dubbing is best suited for high-impact content such as branded video campaigns and product demo videos.
DIY
If you have multilingual team members, leverage their skills to translate your videos so that they’re linguistically and culturally adapted for different regions.
This method is ideal for diverse teams on a budget. But note that DIY dubbing tends to be resource-intensive as you handle translation, cultural adaptation, voiceovers, lip synchronization, and everything else in between.
The good news is you can streamline your in-house localization process by using AI dubbing tools in your workflow. Your team can review and adjust AI-generated translations to ensure cultural accuracy, while the tool generates voiceovers.
3. Versioning and transcreation
This video localization method modifies both the audio and visual aspects of a video to better align it with local trends, customs, and cultural sensitives — even particular puns.
You can either recreate specific parts of a video (versioning) or redo them entirely (transcreation). Either way, since there’s extensive modification involved, the costs tend to be high — making versioning and transcreation suitable for high-profile marketing and branding efforts.
Here’s how to version your video content:
Work with a local consultant
Use transcreation specialists to reimagine visuals and refine scripts to adapt your content to specific cultural nuances while maintaining your brand intent and core messaging.
These localization experts can also coordinate with local talent for voiceovers — making sure the tone and delivery resonate with your intended audience.
DIY
As with dubbing your videos, versioning and transcreating content yourself is only possible if you have a regional team that’s proficient in the local language, trends, and customs.
Start by creating a workflow to identify which videos need partial or full recreation and which elements require adaptation. Then, focus on the heavy lifting: recording new content, editing videos, and conducting final quality checks with feedback from local experts to nail cultural accuracy.
[#TOC4]Best practices for video localization[#TOC4]
Choose the right localization method
Weigh each method’s pros and cons to select ones that’d help you successfully achieve your localization goals.
For instance, subtitles are cost-effective, perfect for budget-scrunched teams looking to reach wider audiences and test different markets. Similarly, AI dubbing is more immersive than subtitles but human reviews ensure cultural and linguistic accuracy.
Maintain cultural sensitivity
Change not just the audio but also images, colors, and other visual elements to match regional expectations. Don’t forget to be mindful of adjusting gestures, idioms, and humor as they often don’t translate literally.
Optimize for SEO and discoverability
Use localized keywords in your multilingual transcripts, metadata, and subtitles to boost search ranking and enhance visibility across different languages and regions.
Keep formatting and design flexible
Design videos with enough empty space to accommodate subtitles without overlapping important visuals.
Remember, subtitles in certain languages like German take up more space than in languages like English. So, designing the original video with text expansion in mind is essential for a smooth viewing experience. Selecting readable subtitle fonts helps too.
Test and validate with native speakers
Get feedback on your translations from native speakers to reaffirm your content captures the correct regional tones and cultural relevance.
Also, A/B test elements like video titles, thumbnails, CTAs, and imagery to determine which localized versions perform best.
Ready to unlock new audiences?
To recap, video localization is an efficient way to reach international audiences without creating entirely new content. You can always start small — for instance, by subtitling your videos to test new markets — and scale your localization efforts as you see results.