Dubbing: replacing a soundtrack after the picture is finished
Dubbing replaces the dialogue of a finished video with a new performance in another language. It happens after the picture exists, which fixes what the audience hears and nothing about what they see. As of 2026-09-22.
| Element | Reachable by dubbing | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Spoken dialogue | Yes | It is the track being replaced |
| Lip movement | No | It was generated for the original line |
| A sign or screen in shot | No | It is part of the picture |
| Line length and pacing | Partly | The new line has to fit the old timing |
Inclusion rule. The elements of a finished video a dubbing pass can and cannot change. Elements needing a new picture are marked as unreachable. Order. Most reachable first.
1It is constrained by a picture that already exists
The new performance has to fit timings, mouth movements and pauses that were made for a different sentence. That is why translating for length matters as much as translating for meaning in this step.
It is also why dubbing is cheap relative to re-shooting and expensive relative to subtitling. The constraint is fixed before the language work starts, which is the opposite of how a generated production could be arranged.
2A dubbing list and a generation list are different purchases
A dubbing vendor sells conversion of material that exists. A generation vendor sells material made in the language from the start. The same language appearing on both lists means two quite different things.
Both appear in the voice column of this register, and the column prints which mechanism each cell describes. Comparing the sizes of the two lists without that label would compare a catalogue service with a production tool.
3The things it cannot reach have to be decided earlier
Text in the picture, a character reading a note aloud, a sign that matters to the plot: none of that can be dubbed. It has to be kept out of the frame or shot separately for each market.
That is the practical advice the register can support. Whether any tool here handles text in a frame well is unpublished, so keeping legible text out of generated pictures is the only decision available before purchase.
A definition, not a measurement: no vendor figure appears here that is not also in the register. Which vendors here sell dubbing rather than generation is stated on their cells.
Nearby terms: Target language, Lip sync. The whole vocabulary is at terms; nothing on this page is a claim about a named product.