How Young Life Scaled Multilingual Training Across Asia-Pacific with AI Dubbing

The Challenge

For the Young Life Asia-Pacific division — spanning more than 20 countries and as many as 30 to 40 languages — training the staff and volunteers who work directly with young people is both essential and logistically daunting. Robbie's team isn't delivering one-on-one coaching; they're creating scalable content that can reach leaders and volunteers across a region where no single language covers everyone.

Before Synthesia, getting that content into another language meant a manual process: someone records the original, someone else translates it, then a voiceover artist records the dub, and a subtitling translator syncs it all together. The result was content that could take months to produce — and that was for a single language.

The cost and time involved meant that many leaders and volunteers across the region were simply receiving training in a language that wasn't their own.

"Localization had become a bottleneck we simply couldn't solve. Every video we needed in another language meant months of coordination and resources we didn't have to spare." — Robbie Yasi, Learning and Leadership Associate, Young Life Asia-Pacific

The Solution

Young Life's Asia-Pacific team came to Synthesia through a recommendation from their Africa division. Robbie, who brings a media and technology background to his role, embraced the tool quickly.

Robbie uses Synthesia's studio to create training videos that equip Young Life's staff and volunteers across the region with the leadership frameworks and skills they need to work with young people. His workflow centers on Synthesia's dubbing feature: he uploads existing videos and Synthesia produces dubbed versions in multiple languages, preserving the original speaker's voice. He reviews and edits the translated transcripts directly to make sure the terminology and phrasing match Young Life's own culture and voice.

Where the old process took months, a dubbed video now takes two days — and under deadline pressure, as little as half a day.

"I sent a French-dubbed video to a native speaker friend, just to test it. His response was immediate: 'It sounds like someone who would live next door to me.' That told me everything I needed to know." — Robbie Yasi, Learning and Leadership Associate, Young Life Asia-Pacific

The Results

• Months to days — dubbing turnaround per training video, down from a process that previously required months of coordination and translators
• 12 languages — content produced via Synthesia, reaching staff and volunteers across the Asia Pacific region
• Eliminated external vendor spend — dubbing that previously required contracted voiceover artists and translators is now produced in-house, putting localization budget back into the work that matters
• 20+ countries — reached through Young Life Asia-Pacific training content

Robbie's goal isn't just efficiency — it's reach. The team is working toward training content that doesn't just translate but adapts: culturally tuned to the specific communities Young Life serves. The measure of success isn't workflows saved or budgets reduced. It's whether more young people have better-equipped adults in their corner.

"Every video we dub into another language means more leaders equipped to do their work well — and more young people with someone genuinely in their corner. That's the real measure of what this unlocks." — Robbie Yasi, Learning and Leadership Associate, Young Life Asia-Pacific

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