After announcing that it was coming back in September at its “Made on YouTube” event, YouTube is now rolling out expanded access to its auto-dubbing feature, which will enable creators to share their content in different languages, by activating audio translations of their content.
As you can see in this example, YouTube’s auto-dubbing enables creators to activate auto-translations into various languages by simply ticking a box in the upload flow.
Those translations won’t always be accurate, but YouTube is confident enough in its automatic translation features that it can now use them to expand the reach of content by making it available to more creators.
As per YouTube:
“We’ve just made auto dubbing available to hundreds of thousands of channels in the YouTube Partner Program that are focused on knowledge and information and will expand to other types of content soon.”
The process works by first identifying the original language of your video, then providing auto-dubbed versions in other languages.
Right now, Google offers auto-dubbing from English to French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. It also offers English translations of each of these languages.
It seems slightly risky, in that there could be errors in translation, though YouTube has also added warnings on auto-dubbed clips which state that the translation was auto-generated.
So if the process happens to change your words into something offensive in another language, you should be fine. Probably.
Offering variable translations can have major benefits, as demonstrated by recent YouTube success “Amazing Digital Circus”, which was one of the biggest trends on YouTube this year.
As YouTube notes, part of the cartoon’s success has been that it’s available in 20 different languages, which has expanded its fan base and reach.
Maybe, that could relate to your videos as well. I mean, you’re probably not going to drive the expanded fandom of Amazing Digital Circus, but maybe you’ll connect with more viewers in more regions, boosting your overall audience.
As YouTube notes, it’s currently in the process of rolling out auto-dubbing to more creators, and it will become available all over time.
If you want to check if you have it yet, you’ll find it under “Advanced Settings” in YouTube Studio.