Netflix and 'The Universal Translator'.. or how to lip-sync on all languages..

Hi WWW

Dubbing is a great solution is to bring a programme to to wider audience...

A little background.. I'm Scottish, I speak Scots as my first language, English is my second language.. I personally, find the Iberian language group* the easiest to listen to, I watched La Reina Del Sur from start to finish and enjoyed it with subtitles.. but what if there was a system pioneered by Netflix. But I add; each person if different.

I couldn't even watch 'Dark' despite it having both subtitles and dubs.. immersion is broke.

Remember Henry Cavill with the awful moustache? For the iirc reported 30 million this cost, I would say it was not worth it.

However this gave me an idea..what if there was a system that made the actors lips sync in time of the dub? We already have a version of this technology for video games.

IF there was a standardize program done by AI and then each program result is gone over by hand to fix the AI mistakes.

OR

You have the actors redo each scene for the major language groups.. many languages have 'sister languages'.. like Scots and English, Portuguese and Spanish, Norwegian and Swedish, Arabic and Hebrew..

Written with common words in mind for the script for each group.

'Latin' language group:
Spanish
Portuguese
Catalan
Mexican
Central America
South America
Sardinian (80%)
Italian (70%)

French (separate)
France
Belgium
Morocco
Quebec
Cajun American French
Swiss French

'Danelaw' group which could be expressed by English only.
English
Scots
Daughter languages of English:
Creole (including African English)
Japlish
Taglish

Slavic Group
East
Russian
West
Former European Eastern Bloc countries.


The Germanic group could be split into two with
Central European German:
Germany
Austria
Hungry
Dutch
Netherlands (north)
Swiss German

And Scandinavian
Norway
Sweden
Denmark
Iceland

Semitic group
Arabic (covering much of the planet, from Africa to India to SEA)
Hebrew

This above comes with caveats, Arabic while based on Hebrew.. known as 'Bedouin Hebrew' around 1000 years ago these languages have became more distant. However had the actors performed in Arabic with a script  focused on mutually transferable words from both languages this is doable.. 60% of words are the same in both languages. I would focus on the language with the most population, which in this case is Arabic.Err on the side of Arabic when writing the lines.


Chinese.

Japanese.

So to tally up, the actors would have to perform the scene:
Latin
French
Danelaw
Eastern Slavic
Western Slavic
Central Germanic
Scandinavian
Semitic
Chinese
Japanese

10 times at most and if eastern & western Slavic could be combined (unlikely) 9.

As an experiment this could be at first boiled down to 3:
Chinese
Latin (Spanish)
Danelaw (English)

The 3 most spoken languages on earth.

Then 4 adding semitic (Arabic) and then 5 Eastern Slavic (Russian).

Most people will have these as a second language.

Those are my thoughts..  :)

------

notes


https://www.mondly.com/blog/2018/12/20/top-15-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world/

*(Spanish, Portuguese,Catalan, so yes not romance group)

Culture

As an aside.. listen I get it. Language is the core of culture and protecting your language protects your culture. I am Scottish.. I speak Scots.. imagine all the abuse I get for this from people from England.. that every Englishman and their dog thinks they can shame in front of strangers and 'correct' me that my language is merely a dialect of theirs..

I get it.

However, it is too expensive to cater to all languages, so we must be practical.So if we are mild in contempt we get access to some great things:

Greater budgets due to having more a choice of actors/talent pool, those actors will work cheaper if they get worldwide exposure.
Better choice of locations for cheaper..language is a barrier to affordability in production, for instance Mexico is traditionally VERY friendly to production companies (so is Scotland as its not about the money for us Scots but getting our name and culture out there).. if you had many Mexican actors performing in the 'Big 3'.. people recognize the value of the exposure, so places might even volunteer for cheap or even perhaps free.. just to get that exposure.

Actors already film a scene X amount of times.. if they do it in another language it isn't as big a deal as it might seem.