Studio Ochenta CEO Lory Martinez on Adapting Podcasts for an International Market

Lory Martinez: We need a global world news report, something like Podnews, but more global to share these really great accomplishments that are happening. You don't really see them very much because they're in their languages and they're like promoting amongst themselves. You don't see it outside of that country.

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the latest news in the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of the Podglomerate. Today on the show, we’re speaking with Lory Martinez, founder and CEO of Studio Ocentha. Studio Ochenta works in 27 different languages. They're aiming for 80 – that's where the Ochenta comes from. They have partnerships with publishers all over the world.

In podcasting today, most of the conversations, including the ones that we have on this show, are very US-centric. So we are aiming to move beyond that sphere and talk about what the rest of the world of podcasting looks like.

Laurie is the perfect person to speak about that. She knows more than I will ever forget about what is happening in other parts of the world in the podcasting sphere – what that means for the future of podcasting, work in translation, IP, derivative properties, and so much more. 

So thank you so much. And let's get right to it.

Laurie, thanks so much for joining us. How are you? 

Lory Martinez: Good, good. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Umbro: So I'm going to start with a very basic question. What is Studio Ochenta?

Lory Martinez: The short answer is it's a multilingual podcast company. The long answer is it's a lot more than that. 

We're a content creation company and mainly focusing on translations. Our specialization in multilingual podcasts is really extended to helping adapt and bring shows to new language markets. We do consulting, we do post production, we do casting for local language localizations. And as opposed to your typical localization company, we really are focused on podcasts and audiobooks as our main focus for content. And in total, we've worked in 27 languages. [We’re] trying to get that number up to 80, [hence] ochenta, which is our title. 

But the main thing to know about Ochenta is that we really care about doing a more respectful approach to translation, more detail oriented. We really care about adapting a series so that the local audience really will feel like the content has been made for them rather than just transplanted. And so there's a lot of attention to detail in the style of translation and adaptation that we do. 

So any kind of project that we work on takes quite a bit of time. We're not just AI translating something. We're always really working on adapting something so that the local listener feels like, “yeah, this is for me.” And it's filling a need that is not being filled at the moment. So that's really Ochenta in a nutshell. 

Jeff Umbro: Do you have like a primary market that you operate in?

Lory Martinez: Yeah, the big markets we work in the most, that we get the most requests for, are Spanish LATAM, Spanish Spain, France because we're based here, we also work in Germany quite a bit, and in the US but for tackling Latinx US audiences – so Spanish speakers in North America, essentially.

Those would be the main markets. After that it just depends on what the client's requests are.

Jeff Umbro: And when that happens – like pretend I want to make a Korean podcast – do you have a pool of translators that you work with?

Lory Martinez: Yeah, we've always specialized in multilingual from the beginning. So [we’ve] set up language hubs of teams that we always [work with] for specific languages. So when, for example, we worked on a podcast in Mandarin, we worked with a very specific translator, a copy editor, a producer who is native-speaking. And so that team is three or four people, plus someone internal at Ochenta who's managing the editorial, going from one language to the next.

And every time it's [about] recreating that team, and we have our go-to people for those languages.

Jeff Umbro: Are there any markets that you don't operate in? 

Lory Martinez: We've never done anything in India. Like I said, we've only done 27 languages. There are hundreds of languages in the world. So there are a couple of markets that we haven't had a presence in, but that we've maybe worked with a freelancer, or maybe worked with a storyteller in that country.

In particular, when we did the show Ochenta Stories, we were able to touch quite a lot of countries that we would never have thought to work in. Ochenta Stories was this podcast that we released during the pandemic. It was crowdsourced storytelling. We basically did an open inbox and said, “if you want to tell a story about the pandemic experience, send us an email and we'll produce it in your local language, plus English.”

And so we started off with English, French, Spanish, because those were our primary language markets when we launched. Then quickly we got Italian pitches, we got Korean pitches, we got Persian pitches in Farsi, in Mongolian, Ukrainian, we got pitches in Japanese. So very quickly it expanded to be very open to whatever the creator was sending us.

And [we worked] very closely with them to make sure that the local version was true and that the translated version made sense. And it's a really great multilingual experiment because it shows that you don't necessarily have to have an entire team in a market to be able to produce something in one language.

It's very rewarding, that kind of work that we do, when we work with external creators like that.

Jeff Umbro: We're at a point in podcasting, and I guess in the world where we're seeing a lot of shortcuts that are being made, especially in translation with things like AI. You just mentioned that you actually set up a team that has an editor, a writer, a producer, a translator, some combination of all of those, I'm sure. But how do you think about work in translation beyond just translating the language? Because there's a lot more to it than that, right?

Lory Martinez: For me, I think one of the things that characterizes Ochenta's work is that we're very mindful whenever we take on the work of adapting a series. It depends on the level of adaptation that we do, but we always come in with a mindset of what are the goals in adapting this series.  It's not just to subtitle this thing that already exists in one language. It's also, what other shows exist in this market that are similar? Or how does this topic resonate in the local market? 

So it doesn't feel like you're just coming to the translation just to change the text. Eighty percent of our work is honestly understanding who the target audience is and what they want. 

When we adapt anything, we're really looking at cultural nuances locally. [For example] in casting the local voice, [we look at] the narrator's voice, who might sound like an upper-middle-class woman, [and we’ll] make sure we find the equivalent in the new market. At every level, we're looking at: what would this sound like locally? And how can we make sure it sounds normal and natural to the person who's listening on the ground? 

Jeff Umbro: Do you have any examples of where you've intentionally changed the way in which you're presenting it in a different market? So for example, you just used the case of an upper middle class woman. If you or the partner you're working with feels like it may resonate more if you have, like a young adult or teenage male voice – that's a silly example, but I think you get what I'm trying to say. Does that ever happened? 

Lory Martinez: Honestly, it's never happened where the client is in disagreement about the direction we're going. The first thing that we do every single time we take on any adaptation is have a consulting meeting with the client about their goals. Because if [their] goal is: “our podcast is very adaptable, we don't mind changing the format as long as it means that it's a success in that new market, because the goal is that it's a success,” then we can talk about changing the format, maybe tackling an audience that's more present and interested in this kind of content in your local market. And then we make a proposal that would make sense for that goal.

If the goal is to keep the brand as similar to the original version as possible, then that is the recommendation that we would follow because that's what the client is requesting. It's more about brand awareness, and so then it's not about making it a successful show locally. It's more about spreading the word about that specific content and that specific message. So we're not necessarily adapting the voice so much or the content itself, because they really just want to spread their brand message. 

And the thing that's really cool is that Ochenta has this knowledge of the target audiences. We regularly do research in each market and are able to make informed decisions and informed recommendations about what could work and what doesn't work, which helps the client make decisions. But ultimately we follow what [the client] wants, because it's their business goal that we're trying to accomplish. 

Jeff Umbro: The client is unfortunately always right. 

Lory Martinez: Yeah!

Jeff Umbro:  Just to ground this [with] some real world examples, what are a couple of projects you have translated and some of the different considerations that you've taken?

Lory Martinez: Our most recent bilingual success was Adventure in Atacama and Azafata en Atacama, which was our choose-your-own-adventure podcast. It was an original that we produced, wrote, and developed in Spanish for Mexican-Spanish audiences. [It’s] very, very Mexican – the show, the jokes, the references. Even the way the storytelling is written and developed, the cast, [it’s] all Mexican. We worked with influencers locally and we did a full rollout for LATAM in Mexico.

Then we adapted the exact same series – it's about 37 episodes – into English. And because the characters are so Latino, there was a strong desire to make sure that the version kept some of that latinidad without making it inaccessible to a person [who] doesn't speak Spanish. So we had to make a lot of concessions around the characters, their relationship to Spanish, contextually making it not bilingual, but still having traces of the Spanish so that you don't need to speak Spanish to understand what the character is saying, and making the characters themselves operate in a more US-Latino way, and have jokes that are more references that would make more sense and would be funnier to US-Latino audience. 

We had a lot of fun doing the project because the team that worked on it was fully bilingual, Latino, exactly this. So it worked really well because we were able to identify the nuances that would make it work in the US. And the show did really well. [The Spanish version] was nominated for a Premios Ondas, which is a Spanish podcasting award. The English version won a Lovie Award. So we're really proud of the way that we were able to very much have a success in each language market.

So that is I think the best example of how diligent we are when it comes to these kinds of things. Because we had the audience in mind from the very beginning, and [thought] about how it would be marketed in the local market, in the US for the English version, and in Mexico for the Spanish.

Jeff Umbro: So you mentioned sometimes you find languages that you don't often work in, in terms of translation and everything. Is that, in your opinion, mainly because of the lack of podcast market share out there? Is it because there are no listeners? Or at least not like enough to make it economically viable?

Lory Martinez: It really depends on the language. The smaller the language population, the less likely you are to already have a very established podcasting market. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, because certainly the way that we've been able to even work in these languages is because people in those countries had heard of podcasts and were able to say, ‘oh, I would like to contribute to this podcast.” So there was an awareness in that country of the podcasting world. 

I think there's also something that is really sad, which is that we always talk about podcasting in the Anglophone world, and the language barriers that keep us from learning about other markets are very present. They're what keep us from, [for example], knowing the Hindi market is huge. India has a very big podcast scene. China also does. It's just that because we don't speak those languages, we don't know, or we don't reach out to people and find out. And so that's something that Ochenta wants to subvert. [We want to] reach out to those creators and work with them. And it's something that we've been doing for the last four years.

And it's allowed us to get a better understanding of what global podcasting is, and also understand that monetization doesn't look the same in every country. That's something that's important to understand. When localizing or even looking at going to a new market, it's [about] understanding what actually makes sense and what is actually successful in that market.

Jeff Umbro: What are some examples of what that could look like? 

Lory Martinez: In Europe, for example, subscriptions are really very big. Where something like Luminary didn't have a lot of success in the US when it came out, a lot of European media is already subscription-based. When podcasters or the platforms that are popping up in Sweden and in Denmark start off with a subscription based model it's not foreign to them. The monetization that works the most here is not advertising. It's subscription based, for example. 

And that's just on the platform side. In India, there're more subscription-based [models] as well. It's very app-based. Also because there are so many other languages that are present in that same market, it's very scattered.

And the way that the listenership actually comes to a podcast is different. It's not just Apple versus Spotify. It's a ton of other apps that you need to know their names to be able to say, “okay, I'm going to distribute in India.” It's not the same kind of simple distribution process that we have for Anglophone podcasts.

Jeff Umbro: I think it's really fascinating even when you're just working with one language – historically, several times I've had a show that's featured in, for example, the Apple showcase banner spot in the UK, or Canada, or Mexico, or another country where we'll just see it shoot up in the charts because there maybe isn't as much competition in some instances. Or maybe it just, for whatever reason, strikes a chord. 

So who are the players that are currently operating on an international scale that are also operating pretty substantially in the US? I know there's Acast and Wondery has made some pushes outside of the US. [Are] there any other notable players that people in this market would know?

Lory Martinez: One of the big ones in Europe is Podimo – we've collaborated quite a bit with them. They're a Denmark based company, but now they've gone global. I think that right now they're present in Mexico as well. They have all the Nordic countries. Castbox is also really big in Europe as a player. And then you have quite a few, mainly, branded podcasting agencies and marketing agencies that have popped up, at least if we're talking about the French market.

But if I were to go into every single market it'd be a little crazy. And again, [when] coming to this game, knowing that Apple and Spotify are not the only players, that's already a huge step towards understanding the rest of the world in podcasting because they're not having the automatic Apple downloads. Not to say nobody, but the world is Android. 80% percent of the world is Android. It's not on Apple.

Jeff Umbro: Which just to be clear, does have its own issues sometimes. 

Lory Martinez: Oh, totally. 

Jeff Umbro: This is one of the reasons why I was so excited to chat with you on the show, is that I have been to podcast conferences in three different countries, I live and breathe podcasts, I consume this stuff all day, every day, and half of the companies you just mentioned, I've never heard of, which never happens. That's so rare. And I think that it is such an opportunity for more folks to understand this stuff. And I hope more people reach out to talk to you about this. Because I do think that there's a lot of opportunity and you're right at the forefront of it.

Lory Martinez: I think it's honestly just [about] having curiosity. I've always been one to say “all I know is what I don't know. So let me find out.” I think having that mentality when it comes to global podcasting is great, because that way you find some amazing talents that you would have otherwise never had connected with. That kind of collaboration – it can only happen if we're curious and if we decide: this isn't the only place. This isn't the only way to do things. 

And actually we can learn quite a lot from each other in terms of format, in terms of storytelling, in terms of subject matter. I mean, the world is your oyster actually. And it just shouldn't be limited to the US-English market. I think it's exciting that people are seeing that now.

Jeff Umbro: You've mentioned a lot of different markets out there. I'm sure that some of them are kind of excelling faster than others in terms of how they're gaining market share. What are a few examples of markets outside of the US that are thriving right now and why?

Lory Martinez: The Spanish language market is definitely blowing up. The most recent investment in Sonoro Global Media Group – they received $12 million in investment to grow their Spanish podcasting platform. And in the last year, both Podimo launched in Mexico, and Amazon and Wondery started launching their own true crime originals in Mexico. So there's been quite a lot of interest in the Spanish-language market.

After that, you have Brazil, which has access to 200 million listeners. [It’s] huge. [The] same thing is happening. It's very early days for Brazil in terms of international investment, but it's very big already. The average Brazilian is listening to podcasts already, at a rate that I would say would match maybe the US maybe three years ago. 

Jeff Umbro: Wow. 

Lory Martinez: Which is still pretty big, you know? 

Jeff Umbro: That's huge. 

Lory Martinez:  Another market that's grown quite a lot in the last couple of years is the African continent, which has many countries and many different dialects and languages. That market is very interesting for monetization. You'll have one podcast that's very popular in one language market, one region – for example in Nigeria – and you'll have the same stars do tours of restaurants and local bars. They'll do the kind of grassroots podcasting, video cast, chat cast thing that we're seeing in the US, but in Africa they're doing it on a higher scale, on a bigger scale, and to an extent that it's crossing barriers as well. It's really exciting. 

I think we need a global world news report, something like Podnews, but more global to share these really great accomplishments that are happening. Because you don't really see them very much, because they're in their languages, and they're promoting amongst themselves. You don't see it outside of that country. 

I think I gave you a good rundown. I didn't get into China very much, but I gave you a couple of markets.

Jeff Umbro: Yeah. Interestingly, China over the years is a market that has been covered, probably not enough, but a lot. Nick Quah [and] James Cridland have spent a lot of time talking about the Chinese market.

I'm very curious what it looks like when you go to these markets – and you can pick any one of them – do you see a lot of hobbyists that are publishing their own shows? In this particular conversation, we're talking about a lot of organizations that have funding, teams, and resources. Is there also a big market of hobbyists?

Lory Martinez: Yeah, when I was talking about the African market in particular, it's quite a lot of amateur hobbyists who eventually turn those into paying communities, and have done really well transforming them into merch communities, etc. In Spanish as well, that's been part of the reason why it's grown so much, is because it's become so much more accessible to make podcasts in Latin America.

And generally there's more of a professionalization of the job itself. One of the most popular kinds of podcasts in, for example, in Columbia is “how to make a podcast.” And when you have those kinds of “how to make a podcast” conversations happening, that means that there's a desire for this kind of education to make it more accessible. 

But, of course, monetization is always going to be the problem, no matter where you are in the world. And so however the professionals tackle that question is going to trickle down into how the amateurs tackle that question. Like I said, in the Nordic countries, it's very subscription-based, which means that most amateurs might want to sign up with a platform immediately, instead of self-publishing, because they know that they'll make more money via subscriptions than via advertising. 

Those decisions come after there's an established market in place, but you have to have the amateurs first for it to even go up to the professionals. And so the first school of podcasting is always going to be the DIY. We got to give those people credit because they're the ones who establish the audiences, they're the ones that get those first people to say, “oh, I know what a podcast is.” 

Jeff Umbro: Every podcaster out there, including the Alex Coopers and Joe Rogans started by just hitting record and publishing. 

Lory Martinez: Exactly. 

Jeff Umbro: So I look at podcast translation in a lot of the same ways as I look at translating books. Ultimately, you have a property that's published in one language that could be published in, a finite number, but hundreds of different languages. Do you see the audio world in a very similar way? Or are there other constraints that don't exist in other markets? Like, is Ochenta a company that doesn't really have an end to the runway?

Lory Martinez: Wouldn't that be nice! I think that there's something that's been happening in the years since I started Ochenta, which is that we're actually having the conversation around multilingual audio. It's been baffling to me how slow it's been to become more natural for people to automatically think, “oh yeah, I'll release this in more than one language.” The automatic nature of internationalization has never arrived to audio in the same way that it arrived to print, [or] even radio. [In] television, obviously, you have Netflix and the platforms who automatically make their stuff in multiple languages. They have the subtitles built into the entire production.

So the thing that's been frustrating for us is to see people [slowly] picking it up, testing it out, not necessarily knowing the markets that they're launching in, so they don't necessarily do very well, [then they scale] back on investment and then [decide] not to do so much in that language, because it just wasn't done right the first time.

But I think what's happening now, which is really exciting, is that there's really a talk about IP. And the way that you maximize the use of IP, in both podcasting and in other media generally. Because existing IP is much more valuable than IP that you make from zero. And that's now the strategy for pretty much every studio, every television [studio], every movie studio everywhere. 

At least in 2023, this was the thing: we're not making new stuff anymore, we're using stuff that exists, because we need built-in audiences. The value of IP is now becoming the center of the conversation. 

And so the adaptation of podcasts and licensing out of podcasts is much more natural to bring to the conversation, because it just makes sense. And I think the more that we see content that is created with that in mind, the more effective this entire system will become, because you have something that is designed for translation rather than something that is super local.

[It’s about] knowing that you're already accessing a global audience when you put anything online, and thinking about them a little bit more – make transcriptions available on your content, subtitling your videos. Even if you're not making the content in the new language, you can subtitle it in another language. It changes everything. TikTok is already doing that. The global TikTok successes are people who subtitle their videos.

Jeff Umbro: And what happens with the rise [of] some of these technologies like translation [and subtitling] via AI? I can go onto your website right now and put the whole thing in English, or Spanish, or French or whatever I want. In my opinion, and please push back if you disagree, I think in a lot of instances, it's good enough. Not all of them, but many of them. Is that good or bad for the industry?

Lory Martinez: I've been wracking my brain with this question because obviously the news has been AI replacing translators work already. The AI translation tools that exist today, in the year of our Lord 2023, are not that good still. They still require a human editor. But eventually they won't. And that's a reality we have to understand. 

I am not fearful that our job [won’t] exist in the future. I think it will just change. And that's the most optimistic outlook you can have. One of the things that we take pride in is that we don't just translate. We adapt and we take [the] target audience into account. So a lot of the work we do ends up being consulting and making sure something will be successful in the local market.

And that takes human knowledge. That takes qualitative and quantitative research. That takes conversations. That takes knowing people in the local market, listening to shows in those markets, having a real understanding of a culture, and nuances. And that an AI can't do. For now…

Jeff Umbro: For now, and hopefully forever. I don't know, I like the human touch. 

Lory Martinez: Yeah. 

Jeff Umbro:  I think the work you're doing right now is necessary and fascinating. And I'm so excited to see what you do in the next year, and two years, and five years, and 10 years. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Lory Martinez: Thanks for having me.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Lory for joining us on this show. As a reminder, you can find Lory at ochentastudio.com and check out any of the shows that they have produced and you can shoot them an email to learn more about international podcasting and podcasting in translation. 

For more podcast related news, info, and takes, you can follow me on Twitter at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate. If you are looking for help producing, distributing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at podglomerant.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepogglomerate.com or follow us on all social platforms at Podglomerate. 

This episode was produced by Chris Boniello and Henry Lavoie. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Vanessa Ullman. And a special thank you to Dan Christo. Thanks for listening, and I will catch you next week.