What language barrier? DW’s plan to reach global audiences with an AI-voiced avatar

In 2009, when James Cameron created his rangy blue aliens that—unlike us humans—never turned their backs on Mother Nature, he brought the niche word ‘avatar’ into daily use.

Its Sanskrit etymology denotes the animate manifestation of another being, usually Vishnu, who, by the way, is blue, which, by the way, is what inspired Cameron’s colour choice for the blockbusting Navi tribe.

And in a further cute twist, Deutsche Welle has now created its own avatar to present shortform content in Tamil, a language whose history and geography overlap with Sanskrit.

It was necessity that inspired DW Lab, a company-wide innovation initiative, to invent ‘Avatario’ to host vertical content within digital lifestyle magazine DW Shift, a show produced in German, English, Arabic and Spanish, and distributed to 32 language units for social media output. 

One of the brains behind the project, DW Lab Coordinator Daniela Späth, said DW Tamil’s small editorial team spread over Germany and India wanted to use the Shift content but lacked resources to employ a human host.

She said: ‘Moderated reels work better, and Shift has a host for English, German, Spanish and Arabic. So for Tamil we thought an avatar could fill the gap and help the content perform better among that language group.’