Planet Water Foundation — AI-Powered Hindi Localization of The Adventures of Droplet: The Germ Chasers

Planet Water Foundation, a U.S./Southeast Asia-based nonprofit that has deployed clean water and hygiene education projects across 33 countries since 2009, needed to extend the reach of its flagship educational animation. The Adventures of Droplet: The Germ Chasers — a 3D animated film featuring the foundation’s mascots Droplet and Sudsy — teaches children essential hygiene practices through an engaging narrative about battling germs. Originally produced in English and Spanish, the film needed a complete Hindi-language version to serve the foundation’s extensive programs in rural India.

Adrian Van de Velde undertook the localization project, applying AI-powered post-production techniques to deliver a broadcast-quality Hindi dub without the conventional costs of international voice casting and studio recording sessions.

The Technical Pipeline

The project required far more than simple translation and voiceover. The original English film features over 60 unique dialogue lines across eleven distinct characters — from the heroic Droplet and his soap-bar sidekick Sudsy, to a cast of children, animal companions, and theatrical germ villains — each with a unique vocal identity carefully designed for a young audience.

The first stage involved building AI voice models for every character, trained on the original English voice performances. These models captured not just the tonal qualities of each voice, but the expressive range — the theatrical menace of the Germ characters, the warmth of Droplet’s encouragement, the playful energy of the children.

The full English script was then translated into Hindi, with careful attention to age-appropriate vocabulary and natural phrasing for rural Indian children. Technical accuracy in translation was balanced against accessibility — choosing universally understood Hindi terms over formal alternatives to ensure immediate comprehension among the target audience.

With translation complete, the AI voice models were used to resynthesize each character’s dialogue in Hindi, maintaining the vocal identity and emotional performance of the original English cast while delivering fluent Hindi speech. The result was a Hindi vocal track that preserved the character and personality of every performance rather than simply replacing words.

The final stage involved reconstituting the complete film sound mix — integrating the new Hindi dialogue tracks with the original music score and sound effects, matching timing and levels to maintain the seamless audio experience of the English version.

Impact

The Hindi-language version of The Germ Chasers extends Planet Water Foundation’s hygiene education reach to Hindi-speaking communities across India, where the foundation has partnered with organizations including Starbucks Foundation, Macy’s, and Cole Haan to deploy AquaTower water filtration systems and hygiene programs in schools.

The project demonstrates how AI-powered localization pipelines can dramatically reduce the barriers to multilingual educational content — enabling nonprofits to extend their impact across language boundaries without the production budgets traditionally required for full-cast dubbing.