YouTube is making multilingual audio tracks available to more creators
After testing over the past few months, YouTube is expanding access to multilingual audio tracks to more creators around the world. The platform enlisted popular YouTube creator MrBeast to talk about the benefits of the new feature.
The multilingual audio feature allows creators to add dubbing to new and existing videos, helping them expand their reach and attract new audiences. In initial tests with a small number of creators, including MrBeast, more than 3,500 multilingual videos in more than 40 languages have been uploaded to YouTube as of January 2023. According to YouTube, creators testing multilingual dubbed videos received more than 15% of non-primary language watch time in January.
MrBeast, who has more than 135 million subscribers, has already dubbed his most popular videos in 11 languages and hopes to attract more international viewers to his main channel with the feature. According to him, YouTube’s multilingual audio feature “supercharges the heck out of videos”:
“Whether you’re in Mexico, you’re in Brazil, you’re in India — all the dubs are in one place, on one video. So it’s a lot simpler for people to understand.”
MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) was named YouTube’s highest paid creator in 2021. He has amassed a huge fan base thanks to his fundraisers and charity initiatives, including the viral makeover of Netflix’s hit The Squid Game, which won a prize of $446,000.
To take advantage of YouTube’s multilingual dubbing feature, creators can add different audio tracks using the Subtitle Editor tool when uploading videos to their channel. Existing content in creators’ catalogs can also be supplemented with additional audio tracks. If you’re a viewer, just click on the video settings to see which audio tracks are available for viewing in another language. In addition, content with multiple language tracks will default to the language preferred by viewers, and users will be able to search for multilingual content using translated video titles and descriptions.