YouTube expands auto dubbing tools for creators with more languages and controls

New Delhi: YouTube has introduced a series of updates to its auto-dubbing feature, expanding language support and adding new tools for both viewers and creators. The company said the feature is now available more widely, with an expanded library covering 27 languages.

According to YouTube, more than six million daily viewers watched at least 10 minutes of auto-dubbed content on average in December. The company stated that the expanded language support is designed to make content from different regions more accessible to global audiences.

Among the updates is the rollout of “Expressive Speech” for channels in eight languages: English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The feature is intended to retain elements such as tone and energy from the original audio when videos are dubbed into another language.

The platform has also introduced a preferred language setting for viewers, allowing users to choose how they want to hear content when multiple language options are available. While language selection has previously been based on viewing history, the new setting enables users to manually specify their preferred audio language or opt to watch content in its original form.

YouTube said it is also testing a lip-sync feature that aligns a speaker’s mouth movements with translated audio in dubbed videos. The test is part of efforts to make dubbed content appear more natural to viewers.

Additional changes affect creators using the feature. A new smart filtering system is designed to identify videos that may not be suitable for dubbing, such as music-focused content or silent vlogs.

The company also noted that enabling auto dubbing does not affect how original videos are surfaced in recommendation systems and may support discovery across additional languages. Creators retain the option to upload their own dubbed tracks or disable the feature.