HeyGen – Video Translation & Dubbing
HeyGen Translation Feature.
It’s easy to forget how time consuming and complex some activities were even in the recent past.
For example, translating text into other languages would not only require access to a large number of dual language speakers, but also the time consuming task of transcribing the text manually.
Imagine then the additional complication of trying to create the spoken words. It requires voice artists who could deliver the spoken text in the same tone and style as the original. Not to mention a recording studio with microphones, recording equipment, and a recording crew.
Thankfully, progress in technology has meant that those tasks have become easier over recent years and, for example, the overdubbing of TV programs into other languages is relatively common today. We still have to live with mouths moving when words weren’t being spoken, but it’s tolerable. Recognizing the expense of a studio dubbing a film properly meant we accepted it for what it was.
As amateur video makers, it also easy to forget that today we have access to tools that would have cost many thousands of pounds only ten or twenty years ago. And often today they are so inexpensive they become pocket change.
So, imagine the task…
Your demanding director client has given you a mouth wateringly large budget to dub his video documentary piece-to-camera into French, German and, wait for it – Chinese Mandarin.
But impatiently he needs the task completed in less than two days from now!
And to top it all, he wants the video to be properly lip-synced to each new language.
Fair enough, the client has loads of money and is willing to pay – but where to start?
And even more important perhaps – is it even possible to get the right talent in place in time?
Fortunately, HeyGen is available, and creating the three videos is a very simple exercise.
All that is required is to upload the original footage, and then specify the language that it needs to be dubbed into:
The software will translate the audio to text, then convert the English Text to the required language, and then use the original voice to dub the chosen language so that it retains the correct intonations.
Finally it will create the correct lip-sync in the video to match the words.
And to top it all, it will intelligently adjust the length of the clip to match the new audio track!
Yep, now I’d expect all of that should take several hours to complete just for each one, but well before the first glass of celebratory bubbly has been downed, all the completed files are ready from HeyGen!
Never mind two days, or even two hours – it’s much less than 20 minutes for all three! And at the current monthly HeyGen cost of $29 there is also plenty of change left from the client’s bill to buy (and drink) many more bottles of expensive bubbly before the work needs to be handed over to meet the deadline of the next day!
I’ll cover more about HeyGen and its capabilities in another edition – it’s a really neat piece of software that just keeps on giving!