YouTube auto-dub translations are getting SO much better

YouTube attracts creators from all around the world, and while that means there’s almost always going to be some great new content out there that’s targeted at you, it sucks when the video you most want to watch isn’t available in your language. Google’s been working hard for years to break down those kind of barriers, though, most recently introducing automatic dubbing into multiple languages. This week, we’re learning about what sounds like the program’s biggest and most impactful expansion since its creation.

Auto dubs got started with some big limitations hanging over them. YouTube only supported nine languages at first, and access to the tool was only available to select creators in the YouTube Partner Program. Now YouTube is finally letting auto dub off the reins, allowing everyone to use it.

Language support has also gotten a lot better, now supporting some twenty-seven tongues, but that’s only the half of it — we’re also finally getting Expressive Speech. YouTube first teased this upgrade well over a year ago, and it’s designed to not just translate speech word-for-word, but also to reproduce the speaker’s tone and emphasis in the new language, helping to more accurately get their message across. That’s now available for use in English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Another old tease that’s finally becoming reality: lip sync. Beyond just trying to make dubs sound right with Expressive Speech, last fall YouTube also told us about its interest in making dubs look right, as well, trying to match speaker mouth movements with automatic lip sync. This one still doesn’t look like it’s broadly available, but YouTube confirms it is now out there in the testing phase.

All of that sounds great to our ears, but there are always going to be viewers or creators who are a little wary of an automatic system altering content. YouTube hears those concerns, and emphasizes that viewers are able to access original audio through their preferred language settings, and creators have the ability to opt out altogether, or submit their own manually dubbed alternate audio.