Apotierioluwa Owoade couldn’t shake the problem. It lingered long after his stint at Aforevo, a Lagos-based streaming and dubbing company, where he worked between 2022 and 2023. There, he saw up close just how expensive and imperfect film dubbing could be. Translating a full-length production into another language could cost upwards of $500,000, far beyond the reach of many African filmmakers.
But for Owoade, the cost wasn’t even the most frustrating part.
What bothered him more was what got lost in translation. Dialogue stripped of cultural nuance. Emotions flattened. Voice actors often overstretched and underpaid reduced powerful scenes to something dull and mechanical. Even the software tools meant to help weren’t much better.
He recalls one example that stuck with him: a Yoruba translation so off-key that “I am pregnant” was rendered as “I have a ball.” He winces at the memory.
That was the moment the idea began to take shape.
Owoade reached out to his longtime friend, David Mac-Asore, then a computer engineering undergraduate and software developer. The two had built a working relationship over the years, strengthened by projects they collaborated on at Living Faith Church Worldwide, where they worked to bridge language gaps between English- and French-speaking congregants at its headquarters in Ota, Ogun State.
When Owoade shared his idea for a better dubbing solution, Mac-Asore didn’t hesitate. He was in.
But both knew they couldn’t do it alone. To build something that could truly understand language context, tone, and cultural nuance they would need someone with deep expertise in machine learning.