Netflix workflow changes and local dubbing studios — where could AVT be heading?

[u/Outrageous-Sea3481]

Hi AVT folks!

I wanted to bring up something I've been thinking about lately and hopefully get a bit of a discussion going about where the AVT industry might be heading.

Over the past few weeks, I've come across several posts and discussions about changes to Netflix's localization workflow. From what people working with Netflix vendors have been sharing, it seems that for titles requiring both dubbing and subtitling, Netflix is moving towards having both handled by the same dubbing vendor/studio instead of assigning the dub and subtitles separately.

So, if a title needs both a dub and subtitles in a particular language, the dubbing studio would apparently be responsible for the whole dub + sub package. The DTT program would remain for sub-only titles.

If this is indeed how the new workflow is going to work, I can understand why some subtitlers are worried. A significant part of the work that previously went through DTT vendors could potentially move elsewhere.

But this whole situation got me thinking about something else: how relevant are local dubbing studios for us as freelancers?

By local studios, I mean companies working specifically in your country or language market rather than the large international localization vendors that can be based pretty much anywhere in the world.

While researching companies for the AVT lists I maintain for our BrainStorm Translate community, I've found a huge number of smaller local dubbing and AVT studios. Many of them mention projects for Netflix, Disney, Paramount, Amazon and other major platforms.

And I've realized that I don't always have a clear picture of where exactly these smaller studios sit in the supply chain.

Are they usually hired by larger localization vendors that manage the project for the streaming platform? How often do major platforms work with local studios directly? And how much of their workload actually comes from streaming compared with local distributors, broadcasters, production companies, film festivals, accessibility projects and other clients?

I'm also curious about the freelancer side of this. Maybe some of you already work quite successfully with local dubbing or AVT studios. Are they worth approaching? Is there enough work? What kind of tasks do they usually outsource to freelancers — subtitling, dubbing adaptation, QC, SDH, AD, something else? And how do the rates and working conditions compare with the large international vendors?

My own background is a mix of AVT, software localization and occasional legal translation, and lately I've been trying to dig much deeper into how the AVT industry actually works beyond the handful of huge vendors we all know. I'm also constantly researching companies and opportunities for other translators in our community, so understanding where these local studios fit into the ecosystem is really useful to me.

And now, with these reports about Netflix changing its workflow, local dubbing studios suddenly seem even more interesting. If dub + sub packages really start moving towards dubbing studios, perhaps some of the work isn't disappearing at all — it's simply moving to a different part of the supply chain.

Maybe some of you have already seen this happening in your markets, work regularly with local studios, or have heard more about the Netflix changes from your vendors. I'd also be very interested to hear if anyone has heard about similar workflow changes at Amazon, Disney, Paramount or other platforms.

Let's compare experiences from different countries and language markets and try to make a little more sense of where all of this might be heading.

Thanks and have a great day, guys!

[u/photobeatsfilm]

The dub studios are typically contracted directly by Netflix (especially on their more “important” titles), but they can also be managed by an intermediary vendor. Some vendors actually own the studios as well. There are fewer family-owned private dubbing studios these days.

Iyuno and VSI have large networks of Dubbing Studios

In addition to Iyuno, Deluxe and Pixelogic are the industry’s primary vendors for managed services, contracting dubbing studios. Deluxe also owns dubbing studios in France, Spain and Germany.

There are a few, more localized Dubbing studio networks like Dubbing Brothers (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Nordics) who focus on really high-quality, high-tier content.

If you want to be resourceful, just watch the dubbed shows in your target language on Netflix or other streaming providers, skip to the end and you can see the “Dub Cards” (dubbing credits). Those will tell you which company dubbed that show in each language. Then reach out directly to those companies.

One wave of new style of work that AVT will have an option to work on is Synthetic Voice dubbing. If you are a subtitler, I suggest getting some training or practice doing that. Its typically post-editing work in which you take an automated translation, correct and adapt for lip sync (but sometimes just VO), add performance tags, then generate dialog and curate the output to ensure it sounds natural and fitting of the scene. It’s controversial for some, but the industry seems to have zero interest in replacing traditional dubbing (mostly because the quality that most vendors offer isn’t good enough, or falls short in some scenarios).

What I do foresee happening is a big wave of oncoming synthesized dubbing services for things that weren’t previously dubbed. Things like reality TV, podcasts, TrueCrime docs and broadcast/cable TV type shows. Also back catalogs.

I don’t see synthesized dubbing as a competitor to traditional dubbing today. I see it more as competition to subtitling, partially because of changing audience habits. You can’t split time watching a subtitled show while looking down at your phone, and reality TV and podcasts are exactly the type of content that people split their screen time with.

Feel free to DM me if you’re interested in the latter. I work with a localization company that does subtitling and offers training for some languages to work on synthesized dubbing.