Fremantle teams up with Papercup for Arabic dubs

Fremantle recently entered a partnership with UK artificial intelligence start-up, Papercup. The two-year deal will see Papercup localize hundreds of hours of video entertainment content from Fremantle’s catalogue of world-famous talent shows into Arabic.“Our talent shows are loved by audiences all over the world, and we are delighted that this partnership with Papercup will allow us to bring our content to even more fans," Robert Cocker, Head of Social and Digital Platforms, Fremantle said. "With over 216m YouTube subscribers and 182Bn views, Fremantle has an incredible track record in building engaged audiences, and we are excited to see how Talent World will grow.”

The deal includes Fremantle formats, such as "Idols," "Got Talent," and "The X Factor," all of which will be available on Talent World. The YouTube channel, which will be known locally as عالم المواهب, will use Papercup’s AI technology service to automatically translate and dub Fremantle video content into Arabic. Through this two-year partnership, the company will reach millions of new viewers seeking titles in the language. "The move is set to bring a huge new audience to Fremantle’s high-quality content at scale, without the costs and barriers associated with traditional studio dubbing," the release states.

The partnership follows the successful launch of Fremantle’s Spanish YouTube channel in collaboration with Papercup. The company’s patented AI Dubbing platform localized hours of Los Mejores Talentos En Español (The Best of Got Talent Spain) and the channel amassed millions of views in its first few months after launch. By deploying its bespoke systems to create expressive synthetic voices specifically suited for video, Papercup generates engaging translated content that outperforms subtitled offerings and can be delivered at a speed and price that traditional dubbing struggles to match. The cutting-edge AI tools will allow Fremantle to localize hundreds of hours of content in a high-quality and scalable way. 

Founded in 2017, Papercup offers an AI and machine learning-based system that localizes videos into other languages using synthetic voices with true emotional depth. Content that has been AI dubbed by Papercup has already reached over 350 million people in the last 12 months alone, in non-English speaking territories.

“At Papercup our mission is to make all the world’s videos watchable in any language," Jesse Shemen, CEO of Papercup said. "We empower global companies to reach an international audience eager to watch videos in their native language which they couldn’t access before. With the proliferation of entertainment content out there, competition for viewers’ attention is ever-increasing. By partnering with Fremantle to localize content with high viewership in existing markets, we enable them to sustainably scale that success in new markets.”