How Film Dubbing Works: From Script Translation to AI Voice Cloning

Dubbing is the post-production process of adding or replacing a film's recorded audio with a new dialogue track, according to the overview on Wikipedia's entry on dubbing. The goal is to let audiences in another language hear dialogue that still appears to match the actors' mouths on screen.

The production pipeline: translation to recording

The process begins with translation and adaptation. Dialogue writers do not translate scripts literally; instead they produce lines that sound natural in the target language while preserving the meaning and tone of the original performance, per Wikipedia's description of the craft.

Once a script is adapted, voice actors record their lines in sound studios. Wikipedia notes that modern sessions increasingly rely on automated tools, such as on-screen text displays and automated cueing, to help performers match their timing to the picture. Historically, studios used physically looped film reels so actors could repeat a scene until the lines matched the lip movements; today, digital time-fitting software handles most of that alignment.

Localization goes beyond translation

Localization is the broader adaptation of a film's content — not just its language — for a target market. This can include rewriting jokes, idioms, or cultural references so they land the same way for a new audience, rather than producing a word-for-word rendering that might confuse or fall flat.

Who dubs and who subtitles: a global divide

Audience habits differ sharply by country. According to Wikipedia, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Iran have long favored full dubbing of foreign films, while English-speaking countries, Scandinavian nations, and the Netherlands typically rely on subtitles instead. Iran had a so-called "Golden Age of Dubbing" in the 1960s and 1970s, though Wikipedia notes the industry later declined amid rushed schedules and low pay for dubbing artists. Egypt began dubbing Disney films in 1975, choosing colloquial Egyptian Arabic over formal Modern Standard Arabic.

Dubbing also has a political history. Wikipedia states that some fascist-era governments in Europe used dubbing to enforce ideological control, cutting references deemed unflattering to the nation, while postwar Western Europe adopted dubbing partly to support international co-productions and share costs across countries.

How big is the dubbing market now

Streaming has pushed dubbing into a much larger business. Figures reported by Irish broadcaster RTÉ put the global dubbing market at an expected $4.3 billion in 2025, rising to $7.6 billion by 2033. The same report cites survey data showing about 43% of viewers in Germany, France, Italy, and Britain say they prefer dubbed content over subtitles.

AI voice cloning disrupts the dubbing floor

Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) — re-recording an actor's own lines in a studio to fix or enhance on-set audio — is a related but separate technique from dubbing, which swaps in an entirely different performer speaking another language. Both now intersect with a fast-growing set of AI tools that can clone a performer's voice and generate translated speech automatically.

That shift has triggered organized pushback. RTÉ reports that Boris Rehlinger, the French voice actor for Ben Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix, leads an initiative called TouchePasMaVF ("Don't touch my French dubbed version") and said he feels "threatened even though my voice hasn't been replaced by AI yet." In Germany, the voice actors' association VDS collected more than 75,500 signatures on a petition against unrestricted AI dubbing, and a related TikTok campaign favoring human over artificial performance drew 8.7 million views, according to the same report. RTÉ also notes that United Voice Artists, a group representing more than 20,000 voice actors globally, and the US union SAG-AFTRA have both pushed for contract protections around AI voice use.

Not every AI dubbing experiment has stuck. RTÉ reports that streaming service Viaplay withdrew its AI-dubbed Polish series Murderesses after viewers complained the dialogue sounded monotonous.