Unlike text-based content, videos are totally different.
For starters, text are read. Videos on the other hand, need to be viewed to be understood. And here's the thing, whereas text content can be easily translated, videos cannot. It requires a lot of work to just dub one video.
But YouTube is trying to change that.
What the streaming giant does here, is making it much easier for creators to reach audiences in multiple languages.
Previously, if creators wanted their video to be accessible to viewers in another language, they had to create and upload a separate video.
Often, they had to create that on a separate channel, and created the videos with dubbed-over voice tracks.
A lot of time-wasting work, even for a professional and full-time content creator.
MrBeast is one of the most famous YouTuber, and for years, he uploaded dubbed-over versions of his main channel’s English-language videos to many other side channels he purposefully created to target his international audiences.
According to him, the whole process was, he said, "a lot more work."
YouTube finally listens, as it announced a feature to significantly lessen that time-consuming work.
Here, YouTube starts allowing users to access its multi-language audio tracks.
This tool in particular, allows creators to add multiple dub tracks in different languages, to both new and existing videos.
"For viewers, multi-language audio means they can now watch videos dubbed in their primary language, introducing them to even more content that they otherwise may not have seen,” YouTube said in a blog post about the feature.
“And for our creators, we hope this feature helps you expand your global reach and find a new audience for your channel!"
In an explanation, the company said that creators who added multi-language tracks to their videos saw more than 15% of their watch time coming from views using one of those tracks.
It also said that during the test, dubbed tracks in 40+ languages were added to over 3,500 videos.
In January 2023, those videos collectively generated more than 2 million hours of watch time per day.
MrBeast was one of a small group of YouTube content creators, with whom YouTube tested this feature.
He said that he used the feature to add language tracks to videos on his main channel, instead of uploading multiple copies of the same video in different languages to different channels.
According to him, this “supercharge[d] the heck out of those videos.”
"It’s added a lot of views per video for us," he told Rene Ritchie, YouTube’s creator liaison. "I think this is a giant win for YouTube."
He went on to explain that he needed to first figure out which language tracks to add to his videos, by looking at his videos' viewership data, and also at the most popular languages spoken in his YouTube comments section.
"The beauty is YouTube just connects the dots," he added.
"Once I backed up my whole catalog and drove some Spanish speakers over to the channel, YouTube’s like, ‘Oh, people that speak Spanish like this video. Let’s give it to more people that speak Spanish.’ The next thing you know, every time you upload, the video gets served to 10 million people who speak Spanish."
At this time, not all creators have access to this feature.
YouTube said that it’s “expand[ing] the availability of this feature to thousands more creators,” without clearly specifying which regions those creators are in, whether there are any other eligibility requirements, and what the timeline is for a wider rollout.