How to create multilingual video content for global audiences

Video content is a powerful tool for marketing, training, and communication, which is why more and more businesses are creating multilingual video content. 

According to one recent survey almost 80% of global consumers prefer to buy products with information in their native language. Similarly, 9 in 10 EU internet users also prefer to consume online content in their native language and roughly 90% of the global workforce prefers to be trained in their own languages.  

When your audience is spread across many countries and speaks many languages, creating multilingual video content is challenging. 

In this guide, we’ll look at the common pain points and how to overcome them, so your multilingual videos are engaging, cost effective, and culturally relevant. 

1. Know your target audience

Pain point: A one size fits all approach to content doesn’t work for global audiences. Localization requires understanding of cultural nuances and regional preferences. 

Solution: Start with audience research. 

• Identify the languages your content needs to support and the cultural context of each region. 

• Tailor your message to different demographics by adjusting tone, imagery, and examples. 

• Use local phrases and references where possible. Avoid literal translations that will confuse or alienate your audience. 

2. Choose your translation strategy

Pain point: Keeping accuracy and nuance across multiple languages is hard, especially when working with complicated or industry-specific terminology. 

Solution: 

• Subtitling: Cheap and easy subtitles are good for informational videos. But reading subtitles can be distracting for the viewer. 

• Voice-over translation: Hiring professional voice-over artists allows for better engagement. This is more expensive but worth it for high impact content. 
• Dubbing: Lip-sync dubbing requires precise translation and voice acting; the result is seamless. 

It is important to work with a professional translation company that knows your industry to get the right tone and terminology. Guildhawk partnered with Sandvik Mining & Rock Solutions to enhance their multilingual training and onboarding processes. By integrating digital human avatars and GAI Translate™ for audio-video presentations and controlled document translation, we helped their environmental Health & Safety team deliver engaging, accurate, and culturally relevant content in over 100 languages, improving onboarding efficiency and communication quality. 

3. Maintain brand consistency across languages

Pain point: Translating video content can compromise your brand voice if multiple translators work on different parts. 

Solution: Create a brand and style guide for translation teams. Include: 

• Tone of voice guidelines. 

• Preferred terminology. 
• Pronunciation of brand-specific names. 

Using Translation Memory (TM) technology to store commonly used phrases helps ensure consistency is maintained across projects. 

For large scale multilingual video projects, integrating AI driven tools can further boost efficiency by automating repetitive tasks and providing automated quality assurance checks to maintain linguistic accuracy and coherence. 

4. Address timing and synchronisation challenges

Pain point: Languages have different lengths so it’s hard to keep video content in sync with audio and text. 

Solution: Leave flexibility in your original video design. 

• Leave space in text overlays for languages that need more characters. 

• Work with editors who can adjust timing for synchronisation without disrupting flow. 

5. Manage cost without compromising quality

Pain point: Producing and localising videos for multiple languages is expensive and time consuming. 

Solution: Plan for multilingual from the start to avoid rework. Use scalable content creation methods. 

• Modular content: Create content that can be reused across regions. 

• Digital avatars: AI driven avatars can reduce cost of voice-over and dubbing. 

Guildhawk offers end-to-end solutions including transcription, translation, video editing and innovative options like AI digital human avatars or synthetic voice solutions. These technologies complement traditional approaches by reducing cost and production time and scaling for large projects.

6. Ensure compliance with regional standards 

Pain point: Videos used for training or regulatory purposes must comply with country specific standards. 

Solution: Guildhawk are localization experts who know global regulations. We can ensure translated content is compliant with local laws, industry standards and accessibility guidelines. As an ISO-certified translation technology provider, we have a proven track record of delivering accurate multilingual content for some of the biggest brands in the word. 

7. Measure impact of multilingual content

Pain point: Measuring the impact of multilingual video content is complicated. 

Solution: Implement tracking and analytics to measure engagement across regions. Use metrics like watch time, drop-off rates and conversions to gauge performance – and get feedback from local teams to identify areas for improvement. 

Conclusion

Multilingual video content requires careful planning and execution, but the payoff is big.  

By addressing the pain points – translation accuracy and timing, cost control and compliance – you can deliver engaging high-quality videos that resonate globally. 

Guildhawk is a trusted translation and localization partner, here to simplify your process and help you go global.