An auto-rickshaw carrying a family through a night-time city skyline, from the localized Trade Gone Mad documentary

Local Futures

Video LocalisationAudio Localisation London, UK & Global

When an international non-profit or global think tank looks for a creative partner, they don't just want a translation service. They need a team that can go into a film's video graphics and its audio and rebuild both around words, imagery and references a local audience actually recognises, not swap one language for another and call it done.

This case study shows how we worked with Local Futures, a pioneer of the international economic localization movement, tweaking the video graphics and audio of their documentary short for a Hindi audience: "अंतरराष्ट्रीय व्यापार का पागलपन: Trade Gone Mad".

Context: The Global-Local Divide

Who Local Futures Are

Local Futures is a globally recognized organization working to renew ecological health and human well-being. They want to move away from corporate globalization toward local, community-led economies. Their educational media reaches policymakers, activists, and grassroots leaders around the world.

The Problem: When Subtitles Aren't Enough

To bring their core message to India's huge Hindi-speaking audience, subtitles at the bottom of the screen were not enough. In fast-paced video, complex infographics, data charts and on-screen callouts must be read instantly, and a voice narrating in accented, translated English never lands the way a voice that sounds like home does.

If the motion graphics stay in English while subtitles run below, the viewer's attention splits. They try to decode English graphs while reading Hindi at the same time. That friction weakens both the emotional weight and the clarity of the message, and no amount of subtitling fixes a voiceover or an illustration that still feels foreign.

The Creative Brief

Our job was to audit, take apart, and completely rebuild both halves of the film, the on-screen graphics and the audio track, in Hindi. Not a straight translation of either, but a tweak of every word, illustration and sound cue toward what would actually feel familiar to a viewer in India. The goal was a native, digital-first experience that feels authoritative at once and builds local awareness across Tier-2 and Tier-3 regions of India.

What It Delivered

Instead of loose text translations, we gave Local Futures a complete, production-ready localized film: graphics and audio tweaked side by side, so nothing on screen ever fights what a viewer is hearing.

The finished video bridges the gap between high-level international economic debate and everyday reality on the ground. It helps Local Futures mobilize communities, break down social and environmental divides, and make the case for democratic, local economies across India.

Graphics and Audio, Tweaked Together

Translating text inside motion graphics takes real layout discipline. Unlike a static document, video graphics have fixed timings, strict screen safe-zones, and regional scripts that take up more room, and every one of those visual beats had to stay in sync with a voice track that was being rebuilt at the same time.

Typography: Making Every Word Readable

Every callout was hand-lettered in Devanagari rather than set in a generic system sans, so a word like सस्ता or आयातित reads with the same punch and warmth as a hand-painted shop sign, not a template dropped over the frame.

Audio: A Voice That Sounds Like Home

The English narration was re-recorded in Hindi, not read off a literal transcript. Tone, pacing and emphasis were tuned line by line so the voiceover carries the same urgency the original had, in a register that sounds native rather than dubbed.

References that meant nothing on the ground were swapped for ones that do: a car became a rickshaw, a generic supermarket became the corner general store, and the currency signs, prices and street scenes throughout the film were redrawn around Indian, not Western, context.

More Frames from the Film

Localized On-Screen Graphics

A closer look at the finished frames: data visualisations, storefront signage and street scenes, each rebuilt natively in Hindi rather than subtitled over the original English.