Every list of “best languages for YouTube” is written about someone else’s channel. Your own analytics already contain the answer, and it takes about ten minutes to read. Here is the method, then the order most English-language channels end up with.
Why a generic list gets it wrong
Two channels with identical subscriber counts can have completely different foreign-language upside. A channel whose subject is universal — repairs, cooking, driving, survival, anything visual — travels. A channel built on wordplay or on one country’s news does not, at least not equally.
The other half is money. A dubbed track earns what advertisers pay in the countries that speak that language, and those rates are not close to each other. A language with an enormous audience and low ad rates can earn less than a smaller, richer one. You cannot tell which is which from a blog post. You can tell from your own reports.
The two reports to export
In YouTube Analytics, Advanced mode, export:
- Geography — estimated revenue and engaged views per country. This tells you what 1,000 views are worth to you in each country.
- Audio track — engaged views per language, once you have any dubbed tracks live. This tells you what each language is actually doing.
The arithmetic
- For each country, divide estimated revenue by engaged views and multiply by 1,000. That is your real earnings per 1,000 views in that country — not your channel average.
- Group countries by the language a dub would serve them in: Spanish covers Spain and most of Latin America, Portuguese covers Brazil and Portugal, and so on.
- For each language group, multiply your per-1,000 figure by the views you would expect that dubbed track to add. Before you have data, the conservative assumption is the language’s current share of your views — those are people already watching you in a language they did not choose.
- Rank the languages by the result, not by audience size.
Do this again a month after each dub goes live, using the Audio track report, and you replace the estimate with a measurement. That is the same method we use with clients every month, so both sides read the same numbers.
The signals that a language is ready
- Subtitle demand. If viewers have been asking for subtitles in a language, or community-contributed ones existed historically, that language is waiting for you.
- Comments in it. A steady stream of comments in Portuguese on an English video is a market telling you out loud.
- Existing geography share. Countries already supplying views despite the language barrier will supply more once the barrier drops.
- Someone else proved it in your niche. If a comparable channel’s dubbed track is pulling serious view counts, the demand is not hypothetical.
Where most English channels land
Across the work we do, the languages that come up first are Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Japanese, with Hindi, Arabic, Russian and Indonesian close behind on volume-driven channels. Spanish and Portuguese usually go first: the audiences are huge, the appetite for dubbed content is established, and Brazil in particular rewards it. German and Japanese earn their place on rates rather than volume.
That is our order, from our own client work — not a study, and not a substitute for your report. If your analytics disagree, your analytics are right.
How many to start with
Two. One language tells you nothing about whether the approach works on your channel; five at once spends a lot before you have learned anything. Two languages, on your best-performing evergreen videos rather than the newest upload, and a month of the Audio track report will tell you whether to expand or stop. Dubs keep earning on old videos, which is why evergreen material is the right place to test.
Then measure it honestly
The number that matters is not views on the dubbed track. It is revenue from countries that speak that language, before and after, against what the track cost to make. Run that calculation every month from your own exports, and you will know which languages to keep and which to stop.
Send us a video and pick a language — the first minute is free, and we will look at where your viewers already are before recommending anything.
Related: what dubbing costs and when it pays back, and how to add the track once you have the file. YouTube reports the average creator uploading multi-language audio saw over 25% of watch time come from the video’s non-primary language.