The Kitchen Sync Newsletter - Fall 2025

Spotlight On

The Kitchen Sync

For the Canada-based Neshama, what’s the importance of localizing titles into multiple languages for broader distribution? Translating and localizing titles extends their longevity by bringing them to a broader audience. By fostering greater connection and engagement, we aim to make our content more deeply rooted in the global marketplace. Localization goes beyond simple translation it involves cultural adaptation that sparks interest and improves acceptance in international markets. It’s a vital part of any global distribution strategy, enhancing relevance, expanding reach, and maximizing commercial success.

What languages seem to be the most reque French and Engli ns. LATAM Spanish markets

be?

e to television, FAST channels, and theatrical YouTube yet, it’s something we ’ re actively ex

What do you look for in a localization pro id ? f d h k b l d xperience. Costs smaller markets. s than the sale.

th The Kitchen? for a heir always brings smart, solutions-o thinking to the table

The Ki uin Romance series of films a Tiara, Recipe For Ro t we first began worki Entertainment animated

Liz Clarke Meet

The Kitchen Sync

Based in London, Liz has joined the active international lan begin her journey with The Kitchen by joining her new col MIPCOM European conclaves this fall With the continued e as a leading global language services provider, veteran operations, business development and sales executive, Liz Clarke, as the studio’s new Director of Global Sales, will be a huge plus in the company ’ s international reach.

Our New Director

"With Liz's background in building, implementing and managing sales strategies globally, I couldn't think of a better leader to continue to grow The Kitchen within the EMEA and APAC regions," Deeny Kaplan, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer explained. "Liz also has a strong understanding of Al technology, which is an excellent complement to the direction that The Kitchen is headed in the Al realm As The Kitchen continues to grow, adding services and personnel globally, there is no doubt that Liz will play an important role in the company's expansion," Kaplan added

"The UK is the epicenter of the global language services industry for the entertainment production market I've lived in London my entire life and look to expand my relationships locally and abroad," Liz explained "Utilizing my knowledge of the business, from many diverse perspectives, I believe I can build an even stronger presence within this market, and very much look forward to doing so. With our European language hub in Madrid, and our executive and home hub in Miami, along with our expanding Los Angeles presence, I believe that the London market will grow even stronger because of our new association," Liz Clarke added. “The Kitchen has a fantastic team, plain and simple Having worked at big corporations before, you tend to get compartmentalized, but smaller, more client friendly companies are much nimbler that's what drew me in Plus, Ken and Deeny have been at the helm since the studios’ inception, and their passion absolutely shines through everything they do... Of course there will always be challenges in this business, but I truly believe that to be successful, it is all about giving your all to your clients. Helping them keep the entirety of their work in one safe and secure place, while streamlining budgets, is imperative. I do believe that when workflows are better integrated, productivity and efficiency will improve dramatically. It’s that simple one point of contact, one seamless process. ”

Teams

The Kitchen

“Utilizing the OOONA platform over the past three years, has been an exceptional addition to our daily workflows here at The Kitchen.”

We spoke with Wayne Garb, OOONA’s founder… an industry friend for nearly two decades…

Will a dubbing solution be added to the tools OOONA offers?

Yes! Expanding into dubbing is a natural next step for OOONA. Aside from managing dubbing within our Integrated platform, we now plan to complement this with multiple AI dubbing solutions to offer our clients secure and efficient end-to-end workflows. AI dubbing is an important emerging trend in our industry, and we want to ensure our clients can access the latest, most reliable tools directly within OOONA Integrated

AI is already a core part of OOONA Tools. We have long offered integrations with automatic speech recognition (ASR), machine translation (MT), and text-to-speech (TTS) third-party solutions based on client demand. These tools are in active daily use and have proven highly effective in enhancing productivity

“From an Operations POV, OOONA has become an invaluable partner in our everyday workflow systems over the past 3 years We salute the OOONA team in fulfilling a need of localization companies worldwide ” EutdelGarcia VPEngineering& Facilities,The Kitchen

Looking forward, we will continue building more features around these integrations to make them more valuable in production environments, and we will keep adding new AI solutions as they become available. We are also actively exploring large language model (LLM) integrations in the near future.

In a relatively short time span, OOONA ha become the “go to” platform for advancin internal workflows for the language localization industry. What do you attribute your success to?

Our success is rooted in one simple principle: we listen to our clients. Our priority has always been to understand their challenges and respond quickly with secure, streamlined solutions that improve their workflows

Our industry is our home, so we invest in initiatives that give back to the community and foster growth, such as the AVTpro Certification. We have also launched a couple of initiatives this year that have to do with knowledge sharing. One is OnStage, and the latest is InSync, the OOONA Podcast, which aims to amplify the voices that are leading change in our market

Are

you

able to talk about a roadmap to OOONA’s future?

I have always seen OOONA, as a complete, evolving solution designed to meet all the needs of the media localization market Our focus is on supporting the industry and making it sustainable

On the production side, aside from super charging our platform with the latest AI models, and integrating AI dubbing tools, we plan to further automate production work and enable end-to-end secure workflows. This involves more API integrations, to ensure data and content remain secure at every stage, from order receipt and asset ingest through to deliver and distribution

In recent years we have also launched complementary solutions to do with resource onboarding, testing and training, such as The POOOL, the Testing platform, and EDU. We plan to continue expanding them as the market evolves The ultimate vision for OOONA is to be a trusted brand for any media localization need, whether for production, training or resource management

US ENGLISH

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THE BACKBONE T0 ALL IPs

Miami is significantly less expensive than recording the same project in Los Angeles or New York

The true, non-accented, pure American English dialect is the backbone to most international language dubbing projects,” explained Brad Strickland, Director of Production for The Kitchen. “For 24+ years, The Miami-based studio has taken pride in its English dubbing team, and it continues to grow in size and reputation We have 17 dubbing suites here in our HQ studio,

supported by a dedicated team of native English directors and large network of native non-accented

“We start them young!”

“As a result, recording in Miami is significantly less expensive than recording the same project in Los Angeles or New York,” Strickland explained “And because we are US-based, our English-speaking team continues to

grow in importance to the overall international language now have quality perfo years of experience, wh have lent their voices to We are also continuously bringing in and training new talent of all ages If you compare Miami to Los Angeles there is little difference in the quality of the voice etc.,

THE KITCHEN’S ANDYSINGERJOINS BOI

With previous senior leadership roles at content studio Alkemy X, Travel Channel, DIY Network, and HGTV, Andy now runs Andy Singer Media, a boutique operation specifically geared toward helping FAST channels, CTV platforms, and

Board of Globa Influencers Board of Globa

The Kitchen has added veteran content strategist and media consultant Andy Singer to its diverse international Board of Global Influencers Andy will provide a strong connection to the industry’s FAST platforms and channels, bringing a new avenue of expertise to The Kitchen producers with content strategy, licensing, brand building, and production models. Welcome, Andy Singer!

“Set

Once the talk about AI became viral, I automatically thought it consisted of a quick, effortless and cost-effective fix to getting the jobdone IwascertainthatAIwasaone-stop shopthatwouldfacilitatetranslationsandlipsyncdubbingwithjustatouchofabuttonand ahuge-timesavings AllIkeptthinkingabout wasthe1980’ssloganfortheShowtimeOven, byRonPopeil,“Setitandforgetit” Thatiswhat manyofusinitiallythoughtthatAIwas!Aquick fix!Manyclientsstilldo! c

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it and forget it…” - the AI expectation

Aligning our clients’ AI expectations of getting the job done at the flick of a switch, the way that magical oven would cook a whole rotisseriechicken in minutes, requiring little attention, is definitely not the reality of this new technology, at least as it applies to localizing media content Likewise, the idea of a quality AI dubbing project now costing pennies a minute, as opposed to dollars a minute, is also not yet the reality we think it is

TogetAIworkingcorrectly,itrequiresrethinkingandre-engineeringtheworkflow. Peoplewhowereexpertsatoneparticular manualjobmayneedtobere-trained onhowtodoitmoreefficientlyusingnew technologyForinstance,3peopledoing oneparticulartask,mightnowberepurposedtoindividuallytackledifferent partsofthattask,butnowusing technologytodoit,thusincreasing efficiencyandoutput.Newtrainingof sounddesignersandlinguisticexpertswill needtobebroughtinHowever,this doesn’thappenovernight.

c Itisalsoimportanttounderstandthe client’sexpectations.Istheendtarget YouTubeorTheatricalCinemas?Quality expectationsdodiffergreatlyfromone venuetoanother,asdoestheconsumer’s viewingexpectations

Technologyismovingquickly andinsteadoflookingatAI asanall-in-onesolution,like Mr.Popiel’sMagicOven,we needtocontinuetoeducate ourselvesandourclientsin understandingthatAIis simplyanothertoolinour toolboxthatimproves efficiencies/costsovertime Andourjob,rightnow,isto learnhowtousethattool andwhattoexpectfromit AsJoshPine,ourCFO,whois aseasonedAIprofessional, oftensays,“Youwon’tlose yourjobtoAI,butyouwill loseittosomeonewho knowshowtouseit”.

By Adriana Galindo Sales & Marketing Team The Kitchen

I'm incredibly excited about joining The Kitchen team, because it feels like a perfect opportunity to bring my entire journey in the localization industry, together I’ve had the chance to see our business from multiple viewpoints, starting as a translator, then moving into sales and strategy within the localization and AI realms. This has given me a clear sense of what works well and an understanding of the common friction points.

I am Turkish and am located in Istanbul The Turkish market itself is in a fascinating period of dynamic growth, making it an incredibly competitive landscape with a recent boom in Turkish content creation with worldwide demands I look forward to working with our sales team in infiltrating this exciting market as well