Latest news with #dubbing
Arab News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Manga Productions empowers Saudi voice actors with dubbing contest
JEDDAH: Manga Productions, a subsidiary of the Misk Foundation, has launched the Saudi Dialects Dubbing Contest to empower local voice talent and highlight the Kingdom's linguistic diversity. The initiative aims to create audio content that reflects Saudi society by celebrating its rich regional dialects, the Saudi Press Agency reported. The contest features scenes from the hit animated series 'Asateer2: Future's Folktales,' which has gained international acclaim with more than 150 million views across five continents and eight platforms. Participants are invited to dub using dialects from regions such as AlUla, Hail, Makkah, Jeddah, the Eastern Province, Qassim, Asir, Tabuk, and Jazan. The four-week contest will run through digital challenges, with active public participation on social media. The company aims to train aspiring voice actors under the guidance of its professional team. Outstanding contestants will be invited to join future Manga Productions projects, further boosting local creative talent. Sara Waldaddah, head of the creative department at Manga Productions, said the initiative aligns with the company's mission to support national talent and highlight Saudi Arabia's cultural and linguistic richness. She said that scenes from 'Asateer2: Future's Folktales' are ideal for the contest, as the series celebrates Saudi heritage through stories that reflect national values and encourage voice acting in native dialects. Waldaddah added that the goal is to transform this linguistic diversity into a creative force that reinforces the Kingdom's cultural identity and shares it with regional and global audiences. Abdulaziz Al-Muaina, head of marketing and communications at Manga Productions, highlighted the Kingdom's rich geographical and cultural diversity reflected in its many dialects. He said that the contest aims to showcase this diversity by providing a platform for Saudi voice talents to creatively celebrate the Kingdom's beauty and generosity. Participants are invited to submit voice recordings in local Saudi dialects by choosing a scene and uploading entries at Use of AI tools for voice generation or editing is strictly prohibited to ensure authentic submissions.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Ex-DAZN Japan President Takashi Nakamura Joins Dubbing Platform Camb.AI To Launch APAC Office
EXCLUSIVE: Former DAZN Japan President Takashi Nakamura has a new role. He's joined start-up dubbing and localization firm as President of APAC and will oversee a new Tokyo office. which owns an AI-powered multilingual translation tool, has launched in Asia due to the significant growth in the media and entertainment sector in the continent over the past decade. Nakamura experienced much of that, having been sports streamer DAZN's Japan President and Managing Director for seven years between 2015 and 2022. More from Deadline Senators Introduce Bill To Restrict AI Companies' Unauthorized Use Of Copyrighted Works For Training Models Ian Rankin's 'Rebus' Gets S2; DAZN Ligue 1, Serie A Deals; Paradigm Signs Filmmaker & Comedian - Global Briefs SAG-AFTRA Overwhelmingly Approves Video Game Agreement, Marking Official End To Nearly Yearlong Strike speech-to-speech translation tech, which is available in more than 150 languages, will allow Asia-Pacific content creators in Japan, Korea, Indonesia and other major territories to access easy-to-use AI dubbing tools in their content. The real-time voice translation tech preserves the speaker's original tone and intonation while translating the words into multiple languages and accents. It was initially used for live sports broadcasting – an area Nakamura knows well – but has since been employed far more broadly, on the likes of Nayla Al Khaja-directed psychological thriller's Three. has now worked with the likes of the Australian Open, MBC Group, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Eurovision Sport, IMAX, Ligue 1, MLS and NASCAR, and counts Comcast NBCUniversal Sports Tech among its investors, having raised a total of $15.1M to date. Nakamura begins his tenure with a deal in place with ads and marketing giant Dentsu, as it expands its content overseas. That pact begins with a radio show featuring actor Shinnosuke Tachibana talking about Japanese culture, translated into English and Chinese. 'APAC represents a major opportunity and priority for us, with the breadth and depth of its content industry, from sports to entertainment,' said Akshat Prakash, co-founder and CTO of 'We're thrilled to welcome Takashi Nakamura to lead our efforts in the region. 'His expansive industry expertise and pioneering work with DAZN Japan makes him uniquely capable of driving our mission forward, particularly in the area of multilingual real-time translation in sports. His connections and insights are expected to play a significant role in promoting the adoption of technology both domestically and internationally.' 'I am honored to join the team in its mission to globalize content through localization, including real-time translation of sports and live entertainment,' added Nakamura. 'Asian markets have consistently been at the forefront of content creation and tech innovation, making it the perfect place for to expand and grow within the global market.' Best of Deadline Everything We Know About Season 3 Of 'Euphoria' So Far 'Wednesday' Season 2: Everything We Know About The Cast, Premiere Date & More Everything We Know About 'Only Murders In The Building' Season 5 So Far
Free Malaysia Today
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Free Malaysia Today
‘Doraemon' days a distant memory for voice actor Ruhaiyah Ibrahim
Some of the popular animated series dubbed by Ruhaiyah Ibrahim and her peers. PETALING JAYA : Ruhaiyah Ibrahim, the voice behind the Malaysian version of ' Ruhaiyah Ibrahim, the voice behind the Malaysian version of ' Doraemon ', still remembers her heyday as a voice actor – when she was so busy, she sometimes had to spend nights at the studio. The 58-year-old recalled how she and her fellow actors would work up to three shifts a day to complete hundreds of animation and drama series from countries including Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Turkey. 'Back then, we were like a 'voice factory'. Dubbing projects never stopped; sometimes there weren't even enough voices to go around. 'If the audience liked it, they would write letters of praise in the newspaper. Not like now, where everything is through social media,' she told FMT, adding that she would earn up to RM7,000 a month circa 1996. Sadly, this is now a distant memory. Ruhaiyah admits the voice-acting world is no longer as vibrant as it used to be: projects are nearly nonexistent, productions are increasingly limited, and many voice actors struggle to stay afloat in the industry. Ruhaiyah still recalls spending nights in the studio with her husband and children. She herself has not been called to record for Doraemon – a character she embodied for almost 30 years – in a long time. 'The longing is still there. Sometimes, if someone asks me to do the Doraemon voice at a wedding, I'll do it. I would feel shy, but if it makes someone smile, I'm OK with it.' Ruhaiyah also lent her voice to other popular animations like 'Dragon Ball', 'Sailor Moon', 'SpongeBob SquarePants', 'Detective Conan', 'Naruto', 'Crayon Shin-chan', 'Robocar Poli', 'Avatar', 'CatDog', and 'Tom & Jerry'. Another voice actor, Charl Fitri – the voice of Tarzan in the animated TV series – is also struggling to maintain his place in a shrinking industry. The 48-year-old's talent was discovered by Ruhaiyah in 2004 when he casually attended a voice-acting audition. Despite having had no background in the arts, he proved his abilities and became one of the main voices for children's programming at the time. Charl and Ruhaizah reminiscing on the good old days when voice acting was in high demand. He has voiced characters such as Tarzan, Papa Nobita, Mr Pink (the duck in 'Kung Fu Panda') and King Julien ('Madagascar'), and also served as the narrator for the Malay-language version of 'National Geographic' documentaries. His deep, commanding voice once made him a top choice for action and adult male roles. But now, opportunities are increasingly scarce, and Charl admits he has to work harder to grab whatever openings are available. 'These days, I do all sorts of things – conduct voice training, host events, and record voiceovers for ads and digital content,' he shared. Even though the industry no longer favours them, Ruhaiyah and Charl believe that, given the right opportunity, veteran talents still have plenty to offer. 'We are not chasing fame. But if we once made people laugh, cry and learn, then our voices still deserve a place,' they concluded.
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘You're stealing my identity!': the movie voiceover artists going to war with AI
When Julia Roberts gets in Richard Gere's Lotus Esprit as it stutters along Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990 film Pretty Woman, Germans heard Daniela Hoffmann, not Roberts, exclaim: 'Man, this baby must corner like it's on rails!' In Spain, Mercè Montalà voiced the line, while French audiences heard it from Céline Monsarrat. In the years that followed, Hollywood's sweetheart would sound different in cinemas around the world but to native audiences she would sound the same. The voice actors would gain some notoriety in their home countries, but today, their jobs are being threatened by artificial intelligence. The use of AI was a major point of dispute during the Hollywood actors' strike in 2023, when both writers and actors expressed concern that it could undermine their roles, and fought for federal legislation to protect their work. Not long after, more than 20 voice acting guilds, associations and unions formed the United Voice Artists coalition to campaign under the slogan 'Don't steal our voices'. In Germany, home to 'the Oscars of dubbing', artists warned that their jobs were at risk with the rise of films dubbed with AI trained using their voices, without their consent. 'It's war for us,' says Patrick Kuban, a voice actor and organiser with the dubbing union Voix Off, who along with the French Union of Performing Artists started the campaign #TouchePasMaVF ('don't touch my French version'). They want to see dubbing added to France's l'exception culturelle, a government policy that defines cultural goods as part of national identity and needing special protection from the state. Dubbing isn't just a case of translating a film into native languages, explains Kuban, it's adapted 'to the French humour, to include references, culture and emotion'. As a result, AI could put an estimated 12,500 jobs at risk in France: including writers, translators, sound engineers, as well as the voice actors themselves, according to a study by the Audiens Group in 2023. 'Humans are able to bring to [these roles]: experience, trauma and emotion, context and background and relationships,' adds Tim Friedlander, a US-based voice actor, studio owner, musician, and president of the National Association of Voice Actors. 'All of the things that we as humans connect with. You can have a voice that sounds angry, but if it doesn't feel angry, you're going to have a disconnect in there.' Since the introduction of sound cinema in the late 1920s and 1930s, dubbing has grown to be an industry worth more than $4.04bn (£2.96bn) globally. It was first adopted in Europe by authoritarian leaders, who wanted to remove negative references to their governments and promote their languages. Mussolini banned foreign languages in movies entirely, a policy that catalysed a preference for dubbed rather than subtitled films in the country. Today, 61% of German viewers and 54% of French ones also opt for dubbed movies, while Disney dubs their productions into more than 46 languages. But with the development of AI, who profits from dubbing could soon change. Earlier this year, the UK-based startup ElevenLabs announced plans to clone the voice of Alain Dorval – the 'voix de Stallone', who from the 1970s onwards gave voice to Sylvester Stallone in some 30 films – in a new thriller, Armor, on Amazon. At the time, contracts did not state how an actor's voice could be re-used: including to train AI software and create synthetic voices that ultimately could replace voice actors entirely. 'It's a kind of monster,' says Kuban. 'If we don't have protection, all kinds of jobs will be lost: after the movie industry, it will be the media industry, the music industry, all the cultural industries, and a society without culture will not be very good.' When ChatGPT and ElevenLabs hit the market at the start of 2022, making AI a public-facing technology, 'it was a theoretical threat, but not an immediate threat', says Friedlander. But as the market has grown, including the release of the Israeli startup Deepdub, an AI-powered platform that offers dubbing and voiceover services for films, the problems with synthetic voice technologies have become impossible to ignore. 'If you steal my voice, you are stealing my identity,' says Daniele Giuliani, who voiced Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones, and works as a dubbing director. He is the president of the Italian dubbers' association, ANAD, which recently fought for AI clauses in national contracts to protect voice actors from the indiscriminate and unauthorised use of their voices, and to prohibit the use of those voices in machine learning and deep data mining – a proposal that's being used as a model in Spain. 'This is very serious. I don't want my voice to be used to say whatever someone wants.' AI's tentacles have had a global reach too. In India, where 72% of viewers prefer watching content in a different language, Sanket Mhatre, who voices Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 superhero film Green Lantern is concerned: 'We've been signing contracts for donkey's years now and most of these contracts have really big language about your voice being used in all perpetuity anywhere in the world,' says Mhatre. 'Now with AI, signing something like this is essentially just signing away your career.' Mhatre dubs more than 70-100 Hollywood movies into Hindi each year, as well as Chinese, Spanish, French films; web series, animated shows, anime, documentaries and audiobooks. 'Every single day, I retell stories from some part of the world for the people of my country in their language, in their voice. It's special,' he says. 'It's such an inclusive exercise. In India, if you're not somebody who speaks English, it's very easy to be knocked down and feel inferior. But when you are able to dub this cinema into Hindi, people now understand that cinema and can discuss it.' He's noticed a decline in the number of jobs dubbing corporate copy, training videos, and other quick turnaround information-led items, but he thinks his job is safe at the moment as it's impossible for AI to adapt to cultural nuances or act with human emotion. 'If the actor's face is not visible on screen, or if you're just seeing their back, in India, we might attempt to add an expression or a line to clarify the scene or provide more context.' When there are references to time travel movies in a sci-fi film, he explains, a dubber might list Bollywood titles instead. But as AI learns more from voice actors and other humans, Mhatre is aware that it is a whole lot quicker and cheaper for companies to adopt this technology rather than hire dubbing actors, translators, and sound engineers. 'We need to stand against the robots,' says Kuban. 'We need to use them for peaceful things, for maybe climate change or things like that, but we need to have actors on the screen.'
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘You're stealing my identity!': the movie voiceover artists going to war with AI
When Julia Roberts gets in Richard Gere's Lotus Esprit as it stutters along Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990 film Pretty Woman, Germans heard Daniela Hoffmann, not Roberts, exclaim: 'Man, this baby must corner like it's on rails!' In Spain, Mercè Montalà voiced the line, while French audiences heard it from Céline Monsarrat. In the years that followed, Hollywood's sweetheart would sound different in cinemas around the world but to native audiences she would sound the same. The voice actors would gain some notoriety in their home countries, but today, their jobs are being threatened by artificial intelligence. The use of AI was a major point of dispute during the Hollywood actors' strike in 2023, when both writers and actors expressed concern that it could undermine their roles, and fought for federal legislation to protect their work. Not long after, more than 20 voice acting guilds, associations and unions formed the United Voice Artists coalition to campaign under the slogan 'Don't steal our voices'. In Germany, home to 'the Oscars of dubbing', artists warned that their jobs were at risk with the rise of films dubbed with AI trained using their voices, without their consent. 'It's war for us,' says Patrick Kuban, a voice actor and organiser with the dubbing union Voix Off, who along with the French Union of Performing Artists started the campaign #TouchePasMaVF ('don't touch my French version'). They want to see dubbing added to France's l'exception culturelle, a government policy that defines cultural goods as part of national identity and needing special protection from the state. Dubbing isn't just a case of translating a film into native languages, explains Kuban, it's adapted 'to the French humour, to include references, culture and emotion'. As a result, AI could put an estimated 12,500 jobs at risk in France: including writers, translators, sound engineers, as well as the voice actors themselves, according to a study by the Audiens Group in 2023. 'Humans are able to bring to [these roles]: experience, trauma and emotion, context and background and relationships,' adds Tim Friedlander, a US-based voice actor, studio owner, musician, and president of the National Association of Voice Actors. 'All of the things that we as humans connect with. You can have a voice that sounds angry, but if it doesn't feel angry, you're going to have a disconnect in there.' Since the introduction of sound cinema in the late 1920s and 1930s, dubbing has grown to be an industry worth more than $4.04bn (£2.96bn) globally. It was first adopted in Europe by authoritarian leaders, who wanted to remove negative references to their governments and promote their languages. Mussolini banned foreign languages in movies entirely, a policy that catalysed a preference for dubbed rather than subtitled films in the country. Today, 61% of German viewers and 54% of French ones also opt for dubbed movies, while Disney dubs their productions into more than 46 languages. But with the development of AI, who profits from dubbing could soon change. Earlier this year, the UK-based startup ElevenLabs announced plans to clone the voice of Alain Dorval – the 'voix de Stallone', who from the 1970s onwards gave voice to Sylvester Stallone in some 30 films – in a new thriller, Armor, on Amazon. At the time, contracts did not state how an actor's voice could be re-used: including to train AI software and create synthetic voices that ultimately could replace voice actors entirely. 'It's a kind of monster,' says Kuban. 'If we don't have protection, all kinds of jobs will be lost: after the movie industry, it will be the media industry, the music industry, all the cultural industries, and a society without culture will not be very good.' When ChatGPT and ElevenLabs hit the market at the start of 2022, making AI a public-facing technology, 'it was a theoretical threat, but not an immediate threat', says Friedlander. But as the market has grown, including the release of the Israeli startup Deepdub, an AI-powered platform that offers dubbing and voiceover services for films, the problems with synthetic voice technologies have become impossible to ignore. 'If you steal my voice, you are stealing my identity,' says Daniele Giuliani, who voiced Jon Snow in the Game of Thrones, and works as a dubbing director. He is the president of the Italian dubbers' association, ANAD, which recently fought for AI clauses in national contracts to protect voice actors from the indiscriminate and unauthorised use of their voices, and to prohibit the use of those voices in machine learning and deep data mining – a proposal that's being used as a model in Spain. 'This is very serious. I don't want my voice to be used to say whatever someone wants.' AI's tentacles have had a global reach too. In India, where 72% of viewers prefer watching content in a different language, Sanket Mhatre, who voices Ryan Reynolds in the 2011 superhero film Green Lantern is concerned: 'We've been signing contracts for donkey's years now and most of these contracts have really big language about your voice being used in all perpetuity anywhere in the world,' says Mhatre. 'Now with AI, signing something like this is essentially just signing away your career.' Mhatre dubs more than 70-100 Hollywood movies into Hindi each year, as well as Chinese, Spanish, French films; web series, animated shows, anime, documentaries and audiobooks. 'Every single day, I retell stories from some part of the world for the people of my country in their language, in their voice. It's special,' he says. 'It's such an inclusive exercise. In India, if you're not somebody who speaks English, it's very easy to be knocked down and feel inferior. But when you are able to dub this cinema into Hindi, people now understand that cinema and can discuss it.' He's noticed a decline in the number of jobs dubbing corporate copy, training videos, and other quick turnaround information-led items, but he thinks his job is safe at the moment as it's impossible for AI to adapt to cultural nuances or act with human emotion. 'If the actor's face is not visible on screen, or if you're just seeing their back, in India, we might attempt to add an expression or a line to clarify the scene or provide more context.' When there are references to time travel movies in a sci-fi film, he explains, a dubber might list Bollywood titles instead. But as AI learns more from voice actors and other humans, Mhatre is aware that it is a whole lot quicker and cheaper for companies to adopt this technology rather than hire dubbing actors, translators, and sound engineers. 'We need to stand against the robots,' says Kuban. 'We need to use them for peaceful things, for maybe climate change or things like that, but we need to have actors on the screen.'
