Agent skill · creative production · heygen-com
heygen-translate
Translate and dub a video into another language with voice cloning and lip-sync, powered by HeyGen Video Translation. The presenter keeps their face, their voice is cloned into the target language, and lips re-sync to the new audio — viewers see the same person speaking natively. Use when: (1) localizing an existing video into one or more languages ("translate this video to Spanish", "make this in French and German", "dub this into Japanese", "I need this in 10 languages for a launch"), (2) the user has a finished video and wants the SAME presenter speaking another language (not a new presenter — that's heygen-video), (3) podcast / audio-only translation ("translate this podcast", "dub the audio but keep my video"), (4) high-stakes translations where the user wants to review/edit subtitles before final render (the proofreads workflow), (5) "translate my video", "dub this", "localize this clip", "make a multilingual version", "subtitle and dub". Returns the translated video URL (or audio file for audio-only mode), one per target language. Chain signal: if the user wants to CREATE a new video in another language (no source video exists yet), route to heygen-video and write the script in the target language — do not use heygen-translate. Use heygen-translate only when there is an existing source video to localize. NOT for: creating new videos from scratch (use heygen-video), avatar creation (use heygen-avatar), TTS-only synthesis (use heygen-video with audio-only output), or text-only translation.
Why this skill is useful
Adds specific commands and workflows for video translation and dubbing that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires heygen account access. About 11k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-07-14. 382 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
HeyGen Video Translation Translate and dub an existing video into 175+ languages. The system clones the presenter's voice into the target language, re-syncs their lips to the new audio, and returns a fully dubbed video. You provide a source video and a target language — the engine handles transcription, translation, voice cloning, lip-sync, and (optionally) burned-in captions. This is not new-video generation. The presenter, performance, framing, and brand assets in the original video are preserved. Translation rides on top of what's already there. User-Facing Behavior 1. Be concise. Don't dump translation IDs, raw API payloads, or status JSON in chat. Report the result (video link, language) not the plumbing. 2. No internal jargon. Don't say "polling", "videotranslationid", "assetid", "v3 endpoint". Say "translating", "almost done", "your file". 3. Polling is silent. Background long-running translations and only speak on (a) result delivered, (b) >5 min stall (one update), (c) hard failure. 4. One result, one message. When the video is done, send the link plus a one-line summary (target language, duration, mode). Not every API field. 5. Don't narrate transport choice. MCP vs CLI vs OpenClaw plugin is internal. Pick silently at session start; never mention which is in use. 6. Communicate in the user's language. Detect from their first message. Replies, confirmations, and questions in their language. Technical CLI/API directives stay in English. API Mode Detection Pick one transport at session start. Never mix, never switch mid-session, never narrate the choice. Detect in this order: 1. OpenClaw plugin mode — If running inside OpenClaw and the videogenerate tool exposes a HeyGen translation model, prefer that. Currently the plugin generates videos but does not expose translation directly — fall through to the next tier until HeyGen ships translation through videogenerate. 2. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills heygen-com/heygen-translate