Outlaws and Adulting score four global dubbing award nominations

M-Net’s Physical Productions team, in association with their partners at TransPerfect, have picked up four prestigious nominations at the Entertainment Globalisation Association’s 2025 Hermes Awards in Entertainment Localisation Excellence for their work in dubbing Showmax Originals Outlaws and Adulting into Kiswahili, from Sesotho and isiZulu.

Outlaws received three nominations – two in the Best Voice Performance for a Television Series category (Anthony Kihuria and Amalie Chopetta) and one in the prestigious Best Overall Dubbing for a Series category. The Adulting nomination came in the former category, for the work of Eunice Chacha.

In the Best Voice Performance for a Television Series category, Outlaws and Adulting are up against hit international series The Gentleman and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. In the Best Overall Dubbing for a Series category, Outlaws is up against the likes of The Bear and Ripley. 

The Entertainment Globalisation Association was created to provide a forum where professionals involved in globalisation of entertainment can work together on shared opportunities to improve and refine the art and science of retelling stories across languages and cultures. Now in its third year, the Hermes Awards in Entertainment Localisation Excellence was created to celebrate excellence in the art and science of global storytelling, with nominees having to demonstrate exceptional talent and dedication to the art of global storytelling.

“This nomination is a testament to the incredible work of our In-house production team and all involved,” says MultiChoice CEO for General Entertainment, Nomsa Philiso. “These nominations recognise our efforts in taking our stories beyond the borders within which they are created. Our hyper-local strategy sees us produce content in indigenous languages and dialects across Africa and we’re delighted to be able to extend that mission to produce content in the myriad languages of the continent with our expert dubbing services.”

The M-Net Physical Productions department is responsible for post-production services including trailer creation, online and offline editing, final mix and subtitling of local content. The department currently dubs content into Swahili, Zulu, Amharic, English and Afrikaans, with the capacity to dub content in all of South Africa’s official languages. Partnerships are being put in place with teams in East and West Africa to dub South African content into more continental languages.

The Entertainment Globalisation Association (EGA) was launched in Dec 2022 as the “Hermes Awards for Entertainment Localisation Excellence,” the first global peer-reviewed awards program in the media and entertainment industry.

“As new innovations in localisation and access services continue to expand the borders of content consumption, our work is having more of an impact than ever before,” said Scott McCarthy, EGA’s Vice President and Global Head of Dubbing for DreamWorks Animation. “These awards are overdue recognition for the global excellence among our industry’s artists and professionals.”

Both nominated series were created by Tshedza Pictures’ Phathu Makwarela and Gwydion Beynon, who were also behind the International Emmy nominee The River. 

Set in the lush but lawless land on the border between Lesotho and KwaZulu-Natal, Outlaws is the story of two families at war with each other: the Zulu, cattle-farming Biyela clan and the Basotho, cattle-raiding Ts’eoles. Outlaws won seven SAFTAs last year, including Best Telenovela. 

Adulting follows four varsity friends, whose strong bond has held them together even as their journeys in life have taken them in very different directions as they try to find love and success in Johannesburg. The 18DLNSV bromance holds the record for the most-watched launch of any drama series on Showmax.

The ceremony for the 2025 Hermes Awards in Entertainment Localisation Excellence takes place on 3 April 2025 in Los Angeles.