🎧 Prefer to listen?

I made a video that did well in English. Got decent views, good engagement, people actually watched it through. Then I looked at my analytics and realized something uncomfortable: over 75% of the world’s internet users don’t speak English as their primary language. I was leaving the vast majority of potential viewers on the table — not because my content wasn’t good enough, but because they literally couldn’t understand it. That’s when I found HeyGen’s video translation feature, and it changed how I think about every piece of video I publish.

If you’ve already read my guide on making talking-head videos without a camera or my batch content workflow, you know HeyGen can generate professional avatar videos from a script. But the feature that made me rethink my entire content strategy is the one-click translation: you take an existing video, pick a target language, and HeyGen re-dubs it with lip-sync that matches the new audio. No re-recording, no new footage, no hiring voice actors.

What HeyGen’s video translation actually does

Here’s the process, stripped down:

  1. You upload a video (or use one you already made in HeyGen).
  2. You pick a target language from the HeyGen language list, which includes 175+ options.
  3. HeyGen translates the script, generates new voice audio, and re-syncs the speaker’s lip movements to match the new language.
  4. You download the translated video. That’s it.

The lip-sync is the part that matters most. Regular dubbing — even good dubbing — looks off because the mouth movements don’t match the audio. HeyGen’s AI reshapes the speaker’s lips to fit the new language’s phonemes. It’s not perfect every time, but in a 60-second social clip, most viewers won’t notice.

I tested it with a video I’d made in English and translated it into Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese. The Spanish version looked natural enough that I would have believed it was filmed by a bilingual speaker. Japanese was slightly less convincing on certain consonant sounds, but still far better than subtitles alone.

Why this matters for solo creators and small businesses

If you’re running a one-person business or building a brand with limited tools, the math is simple:

Without AI translation: To reach audiences in Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese, you’d need to either re-record your video three times (if you’re multilingual) or hire voice actors and translators. That’s hundreds of dollars and days of work per video.

With HeyGen: You click a few buttons, pick languages from the list, and get three new videos in under an hour. The cost is part of your existing subscription.

This isn’t just about saving time. It’s about unlocking markets. A study by Common Sense Advisory found that 72.1% of consumers spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language. If your video content is only in English, you’re invisible to most of your potential audience.

How to use the HeyGen language list to target the right audiences

The HeyGen language list is massive, but don’t let that overwhelm you. Here’s how I decide which languages to target:

  1. Check your analytics. Where are your current viewers coming from? If you see traffic from Germany, Brazil, or Japan, those are your first targets.
  2. Research market size. Languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Arabic have huge numbers of native speakers. A single translation can open doors to millions.
  3. Start with one or two. Don’t try to translate into 20 languages at once. Pick one or two high-opportunity languages, test the engagement, and then expand.

When you go to translate languages in HeyGen, you’ll see the full list. I recommend starting with Spanish (spoken in 20+ countries), Portuguese (huge in Brazil), and French (spoken across multiple continents). These three alone can dramatically expand your reach.

The key is to treat translation not as an afterthought, but as a core part of your content strategy. Every video you create is a seed that can grow in multiple markets. HeyGen just makes planting those seeds incredibly easy.