Former Disney Executive Rick Dempsey Is Helping ‘The Chosen’ Reach People Of Different Languages

Former Disney executive Rick Dempsey is working on bringing ‘The Chosen’, the first-ever Bible-based series on Jesus’s life and ministry, to a global audience. In a report by Crosswalk, it was stated that this mission aims to translate the series into 600 languages and make it accessible to people of every culture and background.

Rick Dempsey On A Mission To Help The Chosen Reach A Global Audience 

According to Crosswalk, Rick Dempsey worked at Disney for over thirty years. In his last role as a senior vice president for creative, he led a team that translated movies such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King into other languages. He has a similar role at Come and See, a non-profit that partners with The Chosen to reach the globe. Rick Dempsey is now the vice president for creative and global localization.

In Dempsey’s words: “I trained for 35 years to do what I’m doing for The Chosen.”

Dempsey joined Disney in 1988 and worked for Roy Disney at the time. He was a Christian and hoped to help bring family-friendly entertainment to audiences worldwide. By the time of the pandemic, Dempsey believed that God was leading him in another direction.

According to Dempsey,

“I just realized it was time to move on. We know Disney’s gone in a different direction from where I started back in 1988, and I thought, ‘Hey, maybe this is the Lord’s prompting.’… I’ve been a believer my entire career, very involved in the local church, and it [was] really a tremendous opportunity to kind of be salt and light in that business and slow down the decay. [But] I felt that some of my salt was losing that saltiness at Disney, and it was time to move on.”

Dempsey’s meeting with Brad Hill while on vacation in Hawaii changed his career path. Hill introduced Dempsey to Come and See. After learning about the ministry’s translation needs, he was soon hired. Dempsey was already a fan of the show at the time.

Frozen was Dempsey’s most translated show at Disney, which was translated into over 50 languages. In his role at The Chosen, the goal is higher: 600 languages. While this goal might seem daunting, the series had 125 translations already, setting a world record.

In this process, Dempsey aims to avoid what he referred to as “Godzilla-style dubbing,” where the audio and lip movements are noticeably mismatched, thereby disrupting the viewer’s experience. His work at Disney also avoided such errors.

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