Not everything gets dubbed. That is the verdict, and it saves most of the problems that appear when a Spanish brand decides to take its videos to Mexico, Colombia or Argentina off a single shoot. Some pieces cross untouched, some cross dubbed, and some do not cross at all and have to be reshot.
The three routes, and what each one demands
| Route | What is kept | What it demands of the original shoot |
|---|---|---|
| Subtitles | The real voice, with its accent | Nothing, almost any piece works |
| Voice-over | The video, not the voice | An edit that does not depend on speech rhythm |
| Lip sync | The face and the video | Frontal shots, good light, little movement |
| Reshoot | Nothing, it is remade | An adapted script, not a translated one |
The third row is what brands ask for and the first is what usually suffices. Subtitling keeps exactly what made the piece work, which is almost always the person, and costs a fraction.
When dubbing stops paying
When the video depends on speech rhythm, when there is on-screen text that would also have to be remade, or when the person is recognisable in the destination market. In those three cases a second shoot with a local creator usually comes out cheaper than a dub that does not convince anyway.
What to shoot so that dubbing works
This is decided beforehand, and it is the part almost nobody prepares.
Frontal, stable shots in the spoken moments. Lip sync degrades with movement and with tight angles. If you know the piece will be dubbed, you shoot with that in mind.
No text burnt into the video. Any on-screen caption forces the edit to be remade for each market. Text goes on a separate layer, always.
Breathing silences between sentences. One language takes more room than another. With no margin between sentences, the dubbed version speeds up and it shows.
Cutaways with no face. Hands, product, surroundings. These are what let you cover a mismatch without remaking anything.
What you hand the dubbing team
The clean file with no music and no captions, the separated voice track, the time-coded transcript, and a list of proper nouns with their pronunciation. That last document prevents the most trouble and is almost never sent.
Castilian or neutral
This is the most concrete decision for a Spanish brand selling abroad, and it has no technical answer: it has a commercial one.
Castilian works in Spain and marks origin outside it, which sometimes helps (food, fashion, products with a designation) and sometimes hurts (services, technology, anything that wants to look local).
So-called neutral belongs to nobody and therefore travels: it does not grate in any market and it does not create closeness in any either. It is the reasonable option when one piece has to cover several countries and there is no budget for versions.
The test that decides
Before dubbing the catalogue, you dub one piece and show it to somebody from each destination market. Not a translator: a person who buys that category.
The question is not whether they understand, because they will. The question is whether it sounds like a brand from there, a brand from outside, or a dubbed advert. Those three answers lead to different decisions, and none can be deduced from a desk in Madrid.
Who reviews, and in what order
The most expensive process mistake is not in the dubbing, it is that nobody listens to the final version before publishing it.
First, the transcript. The source text is checked before anything is translated. An error here multiplies by the number of markets.
Then, the adaptation. Not a translation: an adaptation with the original's duration in mind. Whoever adapts needs to see the video, not just read the script.
Then, the dub. And that is where the technical work ends.
Last, the listen. Somebody from the destination market watches the complete piece, picture and sound, on a phone rather than on studio speakers. It is the only step that catches what no text review catches.
Why the final listen always gets skipped
Because it arrives when everybody considers the project closed and the calendar has eaten the margin. It pays to reserve a day for it in the plan from the start, by contrast, rather than leaving it as an optional check at the end.
A badly dubbed piece is not corrected after publication: it is pulled, and with it the work of every preceding step is lost.
The supplier's objection
"Dubbing is indistinguishable now." On some pieces that is true, and it still does not settle the question. What the viewer judges is not whether they detect the dub, it is whether the person is credible in their market. Flawless sync on somebody saying things nobody says here fails just the same.
That is why the test in the previous section uses a person from the market and not a technician: the technician assesses execution, the buyer assesses belonging.
What never gets dubbed
Humour. A joke that works in Spain rarely survives the change of market, and a dubbed joke that does not work does more damage than no joke at all.
Price. It changes currency, tax and perception. A dubbed figure is almost always a wrong figure.
The local reference. A supermarket chain, a television programme, an expression from one particular neighbourhood. You replace it or drop it, you do not translate it.
A customer testimonial. Dubbing a real person telling their own case turns a testimonial into a re-enactment, and that is a difference viewers perceive even when they do not name it.
The disclosure, where the voice is synthetic
Where a real person's voice is generated or manipulated, the transparency obligation of the European AI regulation comes into play: the content has to be identified as artificially generated or manipulated.
In practice you mark the content with the platform's tool and check that the mark survives re-export.
A generic stock voice, imitating nobody, raises a different question: what matters there is that voice's licence, not transparency about an identifiable person.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 on artificial intelligence
- European Commission, regulatory framework for AI
- YouTube, disclosing use of GenAI content
- TikTok, AI-generated content
Checked on 8 September 2026. This guide is not legal advice. Where this guide and the official source disagree, the source prevails.
