Three ways to publish in a second language, what each one costs in trust, and the review step none of them can skip.
By Will Nash
9 November 2026
A firm with offices in three countries usually publishes in one language and hopes the rest of the business copes. Most of the time people do cope, and something is lost each time.
Translating a show is more achievable than it was, and it is still not a button. Three approaches exist, each with a different cost and a different effect on how the material is received.
Translate the text around the episode
The lightest version. The audio stays in the original language and the episode page, description and transcript are translated properly.
It is cheap, it makes the material findable in the second language, and it serves people who read the language better than they follow spoken idiom. For a great many firms it is enough, and it is where to start rather than where to finish.
Re-record with a local speaker
The strongest version. Somebody from that office covers the same subject in their own language, with their own examples, rather than reading a translation.
The point is not just the language. A colleague in Madrid will use Spanish examples, reference Spanish regulation, and answer the questions clients there actually ask. That is a better episode for that audience than a faithful translation of the London one would be.
It costs the most and it is the version audiences respond to best. If you only do this for one market, pick the one you are most serious about commercially.
Translate the audio itself
The middle option, and the one people have most questions about. It is now possible to produce a version of an episode in another language, retaining something of the original delivery, at a fraction of the cost of re-recording.
It works better for explanatory material than for conversation. What it handles poorly is idiom, humour, technical and legal terminology, and names. Those are also the places where an error is most noticeable to a native speaker, which is why the review step below is not optional.
Be straightforward with listeners about how the version they are hearing was made. A note in the description is enough, and it is much better than the alternative of someone working it out mid-episode.
The review step nothing replaces
Whichever route you take, somebody who speaks that language and knows your subject has to listen to the whole thing before it goes out. Not a spot check.
The usual failures are specific rather than general: a term of art translated literally, a regulator's name rendered wrongly, a phrase that is fine in one country and blunt in another. A colleague in that office will catch all three in half an hour, and nobody else will catch any of them.
Give that person the authority to stop publication. A review nobody can act on is decoration.
What not to translate at all
Anything jurisdiction-specific. Tax, employment and regulatory material does not survive the border, and a well-translated episode about the wrong country's rules is worse than no episode, because it sounds authoritative.
For those subjects, make a new episode with the local team rather than translating the original. The translation cost you saved is not worth the correction you will have to publish.
Do not open a channel you cannot answer
If an episode in another language produces replies and enquiries, somebody has to handle them in that language. Firms occasionally publish into a market and then take a fortnight to respond to anyone who gets in touch.
Check that before you publish, not after the first email arrives.
Measure each language separately
Languages behave differently, and pooling the figures hides which market is actually engaging. Separate feeds or at least separate reporting will tell you where to spend next, which is usually not where the firm assumed.
Where this does not help
If your clients in that market all work in English comfortably, the return is small. Plenty of professional audiences do, and translating for them is an expense with little behind it.
If the office in question was not consulted, do not do it. Material arriving from head office in an imperfect version of the local language lands worse than material that made no attempt.
In short
Start by translating the written layer around the episode, which is cheap and useful. Re-record with local colleagues in the market you care most about. Where you translate the audio, say so plainly and have someone from that office review the whole episode with the power to stop it. And leave jurisdiction-specific material to the local team entirely.
We are an AI-native podcast agency, and translation is one of the things the technology genuinely does well, inside the limits described above. If your material only exists in one language and your clients do not, get in touch.
Related: What Is Synthetic Audio?
