For the last post of 2017, we looked at the biggest trends in multimedia localization in the last 12 months. So naturally, for the first post of the year we’ll look forward – specifically, at what will shape foreign-language voice-over, dubbing and subtitling, and will define the multimedia localization industry in 2018.

This post lists the four trends that will impact localization professionals in the coming year.

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What’s next for multimedia localization in 2018?

In a nutshell, continued disruption in both media production and distribution, which will in turn affect the look and feel of online video – and of course, how it’s translated, localized or transcreated.

Let’s jump right in.

1. Social media platforms will still have growing pains, but marketing opportunities will solidify.

2017 was tumultuous for social media, in particular in reporting and analyzing the performance of marketing pushes. Brand safety became a big concern industry-wide, as marketers worried that their ad content would get paired to violent or offensive content. And there was confusion over just how effective ads on social media were. We should expect to see more of the same in the coming year, as well as growth. Facebook is currently pitching Watch to marketers, inserting mid-roll programmatic ad breaks (i.e., commercials) into its videos, in much the same way as YouTube and streaming sites like Hulu. In short, expect heated competition as social media takes on streaming ad revenues.

Likewise, as the reporting kinks are worked out, marketers will also finally have a real sense of what social media ads can provide to companies and brands. This will mean more sustained (and sustainable) growth in this sector, which will drive an increase in video dubbing and subtitling.

2. Shorter videos – with tighter turn-arounds and larger language sets.

The dominance of social media will also affect the kind of video content we see. In fact, it does so already. Social media users don’t stay on videos for very long, so that most content on these platforms is particularly short. Users also expect customization, so that marketers are now creating larger suites of videos with slight tweaks to appeal to different users, as well as suites of content that users can cycle through – for example, a slightly different video for every Facebook timeline visit.

Expect project language sets to get even larger, and for timelines to be even shorter. And of course, plan to see short videos that can “work” with the sound off. This trend is affecting subtitling particularly, since much of the narration track is reiterated through on-screen titles.

3. Text-to-speech VO will become the accepted standard for accessibility.

Text-to-speech (TTS) is already widely-accepted for making written or visual content accessible to blind or sight-impaired persons. This is in part because TTS has been used widely in accessibility services for almost 10 years – it was one of the fields in which TTS was first adopted – and users are familiar with the voices and their peculiarities.

While English still has the most advanced TTS voices, several companies around the world are working to create multilingual sets. And in fact, the linguistic makeup of some languages lends itself to TTS, in particular in languages that are phonetic, like Spanish. Expect leaps in the development of multilingual TTS voices in 2018, in particular for Spanish voiceover.

4. Virtual reality localization standards & technologies will be established. 

As we discussed in our previous post, there is neither an accepted standard nor an implementation technology for the localization of virtual reality videos, also known as 360-degree videos or VR videos. There are a couple promising starts, though. YouTube has enabled traditional captioning in its viewer for VR videos. And the BBC is working to develop standards and the technology to make its VR content accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Expect debate next year over how to implement captioning when a video has multiple points of focus to which a user can “navigate,” and in particular over how to localize this content’s voice-over elements.

An exciting year ahead for voice-over, dubbing & subtitling

There will be other developments in 2018. Expect e-Learning software to fully adopt standard captioning formats like SRT, in particular in new releases of Adobe Captivate. And likewise, expect turbulence in the caption and subtitle industries as the market becomes saturated with providers of varying quality. And of course, expect the continued dominance of online streaming to affect pricing, timelines and delivery methods – as well as the language-support demands of users. Audiences worldwide now expect content localized in their local language, released simultaneously as the English source, and of the highest quality possible, whether on TV, streaming sites, social media, or one of the many distribution platforms available. This is perhaps the greatest challenge to the multimedia localization industry in 2018. But it’s also its greatest opportunity.