AI dubbing or subtitles: how to translate a video

What is the difference between subtitles, voice-over and dubbing?

Subtitles come in two kinds. Captions in the language of the video help people who watch with the sound off, or who are deaf or hard of hearing. Translated subtitles carry the speech into another language. Either way, the viewer still hears the speaker's own voice.

A voice-over is the translation read aloud over the original, which keeps playing underneath at a lower level. One or two voices usually do the reading. Viewers follow every word in their own language and can still hear the real speaker's tone and pauses.

Dubbing replaces the original voice completely. The new voice follows the lip movements as closely as it can, so the speaker seems to talk in the viewer's language. AI dubbing chains speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis into one pipeline, and some tools also clone the original speaker's voice and adjust the lips automatically.

Which one suits a Latvian, Russian and English audience?

Start from what the video has to do, then pick the method:

• Social clips and Reels: subtitles burned into the picture in the audience's language, so the clip works with the sound off. Clips cut from a longer recording follow the same rule.
• Expert talks and interviews: subtitles or a voice-over. The audience still hears the real person, and the speaker stays credible.
• Product explainers, onboarding and e-learning: a separate narration recorded in each language.
• Adverts: a native voice recorded for each language, or a dub that a native speaker has checked line by line.

In Latvia, one video often has to work in Latvian, Russian and English, and a campaign across the Baltics adds Lithuanian and Estonian. Count the versions before production starts, because every language adds review, recording and editing time.

A common mistake is to translate the script word for word and record it as it stands. A translation from English into Latvian or Russian often comes out longer, and a joke that lands in one language can fall flat in the next. Adapt the length and the tone first, then record.

How does AI video translation and dubbing work, and where does it fail?

Most AI dubbing tools run the same chain of steps, whether or not the interface shows them:

1. Transcript: speech recognition turns the audio into timed text.
2. Machine translation: software translates the transcript into the target language.
3. Human edit: someone who knows the language corrects the translation. The tools let you skip this step, but any video you publish needs it.
4. Voice: a synthetic voice, or a clone of the speaker's own, reads the new text.
5. Timing: the new speech is fitted to the original pauses and cuts.
6. Lip sync, if you want it: the mouth movements are adjusted to the new words.
7. Export: the dubbed video, a separate audio track or a subtitle file.

AI produces drafts fast and handles many languages at once. With a voice clone, the speaker's timbre carries into every version, and you can test a market cheaply before paying for a full localisation. Its weak spots are predictable:

• names, brands, numbers and technical terms;
• idioms and humour;
• two or more people talking over each other;
• music under the speech;
• close-ups, where lip-sync artefacts are easy to spot;
• lines that come out longer or shorter than the original, so the voice rushes or drags.

Latvian and Lithuanian are small languages for AI models. They usually have less training data behind them than English or Russian, so the results vary more. Run one minute of your video through the tool before you commit the whole thing. Synthetic voices and cloning have a guide of their own: AI voice or a human voice.

How do you prepare a video so it translates well?

Most problems in a translated video start in the original edit. Before anything goes to a translator or a tool, check this list:

1. Clean original sound: one microphone per speaker and no music under the speech.
2. Voice and music exported as separate tracks (stems), so the music can stay when the voice changes.
3. A final transcript, plus a glossary of names and product terms with their spelling in each language.
4. On-screen text kept in an editable project, or at least a list of every caption and title that needs localising.
5. Room in the edit for languages that run longer: a little slack at the end of shots where someone speaks.
6. A decision on subtitles: burned into the picture, or delivered as a separate file (SRT or VTT).

Subtitles also have to be readable. A common guideline is two lines at most, about 37 to 42 characters per line, and enough time on screen to read each line without rushing. Platforms and broadcasters set their own limits, so treat these numbers as a starting point.

How do you make the translated version sound native?

Give every language version to a native speaker for review, subtitles included. Russian-speaking viewers in Latvia, for example, notice at once when street and institution names follow a generic Russian translation instead of the forms used locally. In Latvian versions, check the diacritics too (ā, č, ē, ģ, ī, ķ, ļ, ņ, š, ū, ž): some fonts lack them, and some subtitle tools break them.

For a voice-over or a dub, adapt the script to the timing first. Then record a native voice in a quiet room on a good microphone. Echo and background noise are hard to get rid of later, and cleanup tools cannot fully repair them. The guide on how to record a voice-over covers marking up the script and working with the microphone.

In a hybrid workflow, AI drafts the translation and a native editor corrects it. An AI voice can then read it for internal or low-stakes videos; adverts, public videos and anything with the brand's name on it get a recorded native voice. If the office has no quiet room, you can record the voice-over at Baltic Podcast Studio in Riga.

Clone a voice only with the written consent of the person it belongs to, and within the tool's terms of use. Label AI-altered voices where the platform or the law requires it.

How much does translating a video cost, and how long does it take?

The price of a translated video depends on:

• how many minutes the video runs;
• how many languages you need;
• how many people speak on screen;
• whether you need lip sync;
• how many review rounds each language goes through;
• the voice: synthetic, or a recorded human voice;
• the editing that lays the new tracks and subtitles under the picture.

Time follows the same chain: transcript and translation, native review, recording, editing and approval. Subtitles are the fastest route. Dubbing with a proper review is the slowest, and every extra language repeats the review and the approval.

At Baltic Podcast Studio, voice recording costs €60/h, with sound mastering included. If you also want the studio to edit the new audio track under the picture, editing is billed by the hour. To see how the hours add up, estimate a session.