Have you ever gotten frustrated because you found a super interesting YouTube video or a helpful tutorial that can fix your problem, but it"s in a different language? YouTube announced that it"s rolling out the multi-language audio feature to millions of creators globally over the coming weeks.
As the name suggests, creators can upload dubbed audio tracks in multiple languages, reaching a global audience who can watch videos in their preferred language. "Now, when a YouTube creator in the U.S. releases a new video, within moments a fan in Korea, a fan in Brazil, and a fan in India can all watch it in their native language," YouTube said.
Once you open a YouTube video, you can click on the gear button in the video player to find the "Audio track" option. It expands to offer a list of all the audio languages available in the video.
The video-sharing platform has been testing the multi-language audio feature with a limited group of creators since early 2023. However, multi-language audio tracks aren"t a new thing in the video industry, and streaming giants like Netflix and Prime Video have also embraced them for years.
In fact, support for multiple audio languages has been around since the pre-streaming era, when people mostly relied on DVD and Blu-ray to watch movies and TV shows. A DVD could support up to eight audio tracks or streams for multi-language films.
However, the number of languages isn"t a barrier in YouTube"s case. It averages at 30 languages per video in the case of former NASA engineer turned YouTuber Mark Rober, who was part of the pilot program that also included MrBeast and Jamie Oliver.
YouTube found that creators who upload multi-language audio tracks to their videos saw over 25% of the watch time coming from non-primary languages. Adding more languages to a video can result in more views, as seen in the case of a popular chef"s channel.
Building on the feature, YouTube is also testing multi-language thumbnails with a small group of creators who can add localized thumbnails based on viewers" selected language.