The problem
Clients with customers abroad ask for their videos in other languages, and voiceover artists and studio time put many small jobs out of reach. Turning down 2 translation jobs a month worth $532£400€476A$768C$752 each is $1,064£800€952A$1,536C$1,504 a month of work going elsewhere.
What the AI does
ElevenLabs Dubbing translates a video's speech into other languages (its site lists 90+ languages and accents) in a voice clone of the original speaker, with timing that follows the original. Creator includes 121,000 credits a month and a commercial license; automatic dubbing without a watermark uses 3,000 credits a minute, and Dubbing Studio without a watermark uses 10,000. A native speaker checks every dub before delivery, and everyone on screen agrees in writing to their voice being cloned.
A worked example
A two-person video production company in Birmingham makes product and training videos for manufacturers that export to Europe. It now offers French and German versions, dubbed with ElevenLabs and checked by freelance native speakers.
Before
Translation requests turned down: 2 jobs a month worth $532£400€476A$768C$752 each lost
After
2 dubbing jobs a month at $532£400€476A$768C$752 each a 3-minute video in 2 languages: 12 minutes of dubbing, about 36,000 credits on automatic dubbing
What it's worth
About $372£280€333A$538C$526 a month in profit, at an assumed 35% margin on $1,064£800€952A$1,536C$1,504 of extra work (2 dubbing jobs at $532£400€476A$768C$752) after paying the native-speaker checkers. That is against $22 (about $23£17€20A$33C$32) a month for Creator, or $18.33 (about $19£14€17A$27C$26) a month on annual billing.
How to set it up
- Get written consent from everyone whose voice will be cloned, saying which languages and where the dub will be used.
- Upload the final cut and run the dub into each language on the Creator plan, which includes the commercial license.
- Have a native speaker of each language watch the dub, check the translation and technical terms, and list fixes.
- Fix or re-run the sections they flag, then get the client's sign-off on each language.
- Label the dubbed versions as AI-dubbed where the client or platform requires it.
What goes wrong
- Cloning someone's voice without clear consent is a serious risk to them and to you. Get it in writing before you start.
- Machine translation can get technical or safety wording wrong. For training or safety videos, the native-speaker check is not optional.
- Credits are shared across everything you do in ElevenLabs, and Dubbing Studio uses more than three times the credits per minute of automatic dubbing.
- The free plan has no commercial license, so client work needs a paid plan.