Three Steps to Creating a Successful Multilingual Podcast
Creators from around the world share how they make translated podcasts come to life.
The multilingual podcasting has accelerated in the last few years, with major U.S. publishers like Wondery and iHeartMedia launching translated versions of blockbuster English-language podcasts like Dr. Death and Stuff You Should Know. Copenhagen-based Podimo recently launched true-crime show The Missing in Spanish, Danish and German, and the U.S. production company Futuro Studio released La Brega, a show about life in Puerto Rico, in both Spanish and English.
The business case for translating audio is clear, but those who are new to the world of multilingual podcasting may find things lost in translation, literally.
Creators at IVM Podcasts, SOWT Podcasts, and Kerning Cultures share their advice for creating successful podcasts in multiple languages.
Step 1: The Right Idea
The first step to creating a successful multilingual show is choosing the right subject matter. For Mumbai-based IVM Podcasts, that means choosing episode themes that are widely relatable for shows like Smile India, a nonfiction podcast about positive stories happening around the globe.
“Those stories [in Smile India] are location-agnostic,” says Kavita Rajwade, Co-founder of the studio. “Our next project is around a show that we’ve now had for two and a half years, The Habit Coach. We could make this into a hundred languages because good habits are universal.”
The Paris-based production company Studio Ochenta applied this concept to their multilingual fiction series Mija, which recently launched its English-Arabic version. Adding to the podcast’s highly relatable topic– a family’s story of immigration — is the close collaboration with Amman-based SOWT Podcasts, who proofreads and advises on the show.
“Translation is not just about words; it’s about messaging. […] And [at Studio Ochenta] they were very conscious about that,” says Tala Elissa, Managing Producer at SOWT Podcasts. “They always asked us if we thought what they wrote would sound natural to an Arabic person. This give-and-take made our collaboration very successful in that sense.”
Hiring a local producer helps to ensure cultural accuracy. This will both help creators avoid the risk of overexplaining concepts to the local audience and prevent the show from unconsciously reflecting the culture of the producer. “We suggested they change the music accompanying the show as it was too ‘oriental.’ It wasn’t something major, but it felt unnatural,” Elissa explains.
Step 2: An Adaptive Approach
Of course, not all shows are born multilingual. To translate Mal Amal, a show about labor rights, the team at SOWT Podcasts adapted the script while keeping the target audience in mind.
“I think that the perception of translation as a literal process shouldn’t be there. It’s not just about turning foreign words and mindsets into Arabic,” says Elissa. “For instance, when dubbing the interviews of foreign workers and domestic helpers for Mal Amal, we personally do not like to keep the original voice in the back. It may be good for credibility purposes, but because we are very much into storytelling, we’d much rather focus on the Arabic voice, the dubbing voice. We’d hear the original voice just for a couple of seconds, and then fade it out.”
Middle-East based Kerning Cultures Network took a similar approach when adapting an episode of their podcast Kerning Cultures that portrays an Egyptian spiritual dancing ritual. “We only kept the core reporting for both the English and Arabic version, but then it was developed differently,” says Arabic Managing Editor Heba Afify. “For the Arabic version, we didn’t really have to go into a lot of context and background, and we could go very deep with the storytelling. While for the English production, the theme and the questions that the episode was trying to answer were very different, to cater to the English-speaking audience.”
Step 3: A Matter of Style
This adaptation exercise has an additional benefit: it helps creators avoid the common pitfall of copying the style of the original podcast. As a recent article by the New York Times explains, podcasting companies overseas have been drawing inspiration from U.S. shows to find their tone. But.no matter how popular it is in the U.S., a podcast’s tone might not work for a non-U.S. audience.
“There’s an element of closeness and authenticity to podcasting that is unique. It’s also what makes translating for podcasting more difficult than for other mainstream media. This is even truer for Arabic, where we have two language variants: a formal written language and a colloquial language. The podcast tone in Arabic is really not there yet because we don’t usually produce content using the colloquial language,” Afify explains.
Relatability, adaptation rather than translation, and a culture-specific tone are three main ingredients for a successful multilingual podcast. To tap into emerging markets, production companies will have to reimagine their shows with an appreciation for local culture, language, and nuance. It will be a full-fledged creative endeavor, and one that has a direct return of investment from new audiences.
This article was sponsored by Riverside.fm. With Riverside, you can record HD audio & video that’s immune to bad internet connections. Guy Raz, Hillary Clinton, Disney, and Marvel already use Riverside to record their podcast.
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