Translation Styles & Glossary
Every brand has words that need to stay consistent across languages — product names, slogans, technical terms, the way you address your audience. Dubly.AI's Translation Styles are how you lock those in. A Translation Style is a reusable bundle of rules for one source-to-target language pair, applied per language at dub creation time. This article explains how to set them up, what they can do, and how to use them to enforce brand guidelines across a series of videos.
Where to find Translation Styles
Open Translation Style from the sidebar.
Translation Styles live at the organization level. Every member of your organization sees the same list, and any style you create here is available to every dub in the organization. There's no per-project copy to keep in sync.
What a Translation Style contains
A Translation Style is a reusable bundle of rules for a specific source-to-target language pair — for example, English → German or English → Spanish (Mexico). Each style covers two kinds of rules:
Terminology rules — locking specific words and phrases:
Do-not-translate list — words the translator must leave in the source language. Perfect for brand names, product names, trademarked terms, SKUs, URLs.
Custom word pairs (your Glossary) — exact source-to-target translations. Use these when the default translation of a term is wrong or off-brand (e.g. always translate subscriber as Abonnent in German, not Abonnement).
Pronunciation guide — phonetic hints the voice model uses when it speaks tricky names or acronyms (e.g. AWS ⇒ ay-double-yoo-ess, not aws, or Nike ⇒ Naikee not Neiki).
Voice rules — controlling how the translation sounds overall:
Writing style — how concise, technical, or descriptive the translator should aim for.
Tone — the emotional register your brand wants on camera (professional, casual, energetic, friendly, etc.).
Formality — explicit informal or formal register. Matters for languages where it changes the grammar (e.g. German du vs. Sie, French tu vs. vous).
Plus:
Style name — whatever name helps your team pick the right one later.
Source and target language — the pair this style applies to.
Creating a Translation Style
Go to Translation Style in the sidebar.
Add a new style.
Pick the source and target language.
Fill in only the sections that matter for this pair — leave anything you don't need empty.
Save.
You can create as many styles as you need: one per market, one per product line, one per brand, or just one catch-all.
Applying a style to a dub
When you create a new dub:
Open the dub creation modal.
Switch to the Translation Styles tab.
For each target language, pick a Translation Style.
If you don't pick one, the dub uses Dubly.AI's defaults.
Styles apply per target language. The same English source can use one style for German and a different one for French in the same dub.
Enforcing brand guidelines across a series
If you publish a series of videos, you want every dub to sound like the same brand. Translation Styles are how you make that happen without hand-tuning every dub.
Recommended workflow:
First dub in a series — experiment to find the right tone, formality, and terminology.
Second dub onward — apply the same Translation Style for the same language pair. New translations come out matching the rules without per-segment tweaking.
As soon as a brand-specific term appears in two different translations — add it to the style's custom word pairs or do-not-translate list. That's the cue to lock it in.
Before launching a multi-video campaign — configure once, then run all videos against the same style.
For a recurring series, this is the difference between hand-tuning every dub and getting consistent output without intervention.
What Translation Styles can't do
They don't override segment-level edits. A manual translation edit on a segment beats whatever the style would have produced.
They don't replace human review. For high-stakes content (legal, medical, regulatory), a native-speaker review is still the safety net.
They don't auto-apply to existing dubs. Updating a style does not re-translate dubs that already used it. The new rules apply to future dubs and to segments you re-sync from the editor going forward. See Can I change the translation style on an already dubbed video?.
Who can edit styles
All roles (Owner, Admin, Member, Native Speaker) can view, create, and update Translation Styles.
Only Owner and Admin can delete a style.
Best practices
Start with do-not-translate. Brand names, product names, UI labels that must stay in the source language — lock these first. It's the fastest win.
Keep custom word pairs short and unambiguous. If a term needs a paragraph of context, it's a bad custom translation — split it into multiple entries or handle it in the transcript editor.
Add pronunciations for acronyms and proper nouns. The voice model usually guesses right but will struggle with novel or domain-specific names. A quick phonetic hint saves a re-record.
Audit quarterly. Pick one target language, spot-check a recent dub with a native reviewer, and update the style based on what you find.
Limits
Each individual entry (custom translation, pronunciation, do-not-translate term) is capped at 500 characters.
Style names are capped at 255 characters.
No upper limit on how many styles or entries you can create.
No bulk CSV import/export yet — entries are added one at a time.
Still need help?
If a term keeps being mistranslated even after you've added it, contact hello@dubly.ai with the style name, the source text, and the output you expected.