Why should you launch your content in a foreign language?

Adam Franek
3 min readJan 19, 2021

Whether you are a religious person that believes in the Tower of Babel and the origin myth explaining why people speak different languages, or not, there is no denying that as much as languages are beautiful and unique creations, they can also prove to be a difficult barrier for content creators.

Spending enormous amounts of time to create high-quality content is a daunting task on its own, let alone figuring your way out around the intricacies and nuances of a foreign language, is it worth the hassle?

The answer to that question is a definite: YES!

We are all aware of the globalization of our surroundings and the amazing possibilities and reach of YouTube. With ever increasing ad revenues, slow decline of traditional forms of advertising and new money flowing into digital media, it’s time to capitalize on those trends.

Despite the aforementioned globalization, not everyone is an English speaker, or even half-fluent to begin with. As a matter of fact more than 50% of YouTube views come from non-English speakers, so translating your content into a foreign language is crucial, but it must be done right.

As a successful creator think what got you to where you are right now? Hard work? Quality content? Engagement with your audience?

Same principles should be applied when launching a foreign language channel, there is no room for cutting corners, poor AI translation or cheap dubbing. The only way to guarantee success is 100% human-powered work at all stages of the process.

Thinking about getting away with just subtitles? Forget it! With our attention spans shrinking you will never get anywhere close to a decent average view duration. So many people love to multi-task and have some content going in the background, why not provide them with an opportunity through amazing and captivating dubbing so they can watch YOUR content?

At unilingo we found that some of our channels generate as much as 80% of all views from mobile devices. Yes, our mobile phones are bigger and cooler but still far from providing a comfortable watching experience if you have to read subtitles.

We found that with high-quality dubbing the amount of people who use subtitles can be reduced to only 8%.

Dubbing provides smooth experience across all devices.

Duplicating your content into a foreign language provides you with additional revenue streams and opportunities for local brand partnerships. If you are interested in becoming a global icon with world-wide recognition, localizing your content is a great start to achieving that goal.

If you are more of an educator and humanitarian then launching a foreign language channel’s main objective could be as simple as spreading the word and awareness further and further.

It’s important to remember that only a complete language immersion can provide great results — dubbing, texts and images, meta-tags, and thumbnails need to be in the user’s native language.

It could mean a lot of work, but there is a great reward at the end. YouTube will reward you for providing localized content — we have found that our channels are able to generate as much as 80% traffic from YouTube’s browsing functions and suggested videos.

YouTube will recommend your localized content.

If you want to hire experts for localizing your channel, unilingo can provide you with a very smooth and hands-off solution that won’t break your bank, while ensuring best in class quality with native speakers working on the process at all stages.

The world is starving for great content, why not give the people what they want?

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Adam Franek

Head of Partnerships @ unilingo - unlock your global audience.