13 Years Later, Star Wars Is Repeating An Innovative Voice Acting Trick

Star Wars canon has been picked apart over and over again, but there’s one element that most fans take for granted: most characters speak English. Technically, it’s not English; it’s Galactic Basic Standard, and it’s the language most spoken across the galaxy. However, it’s not the only one, and we can see that in the first movie alone with R2-D2’s binary blips, Greedo’s Huttese, and Chewbacca’s Shyriiwook.

The same is true of our world. While most movies are made in English, that isn’t accessible to everyone. For the first time, Disney is making Star Wars available in an often-ignored language, and it’s got a star-studded lineup of voice actors.

StarWars.com recently announced that Star Wars will be dubbed into Welsh for the first time, in collaboration with S4C, the Welsh public broadcasting channel. Entitled Star Wars: Gobaith Newydd, the dub will broadcast on S4C and across its platforms from Christmas Day onwards, leading into 2027, the year of Star Wars’ 50th anniversary.

This new audio track includes many famous Welsh stars: Matthew Rhys (Widow’s Bay) as Han Solo, Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon) as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Aimee-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses) as Princess Leia. Mark Lewis Jones, who played First Order Captain Moden Canady in The Last Jedi, will lend his voice to none other than Darth Vader.

The dub was announced at the National Eisteddfod, the poetry and music festival dedicated to celebrating Welsh language and culture. Though Wales may be part of the United Kingdom, keeping the country’s cultural identity and language alive has always been very important in society, and this is just further proof.

The Welsh Star Wars dub has an interesting historical precedent

It’s clear to see why a Welsh dub was of particular interest, since new Lucasfilm co-president Lynwen Brennan was born and raised in Wales.

Plus, one Millennium Falcon was built in Wales for The Empire Strikes Back, not to mention The Acolyte and Willow were both partially filmed there.

On top of all of this, Lucasfilm has always made an effort to make Star Wars as accessible as possible. Back in 2013, Lucasfilm released Sǫʼtah Anaaʼ: Siih Náhásdlįį, a Navajo-language dub, in select theaters throughout Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, and later on Disney+. In 2023, a similar Ojibwe translation was given the same treatment.

So this Welsh dub isn’t just a novel way to keep the language alive. It’s the latest result of a long effort to bring the universal appeal of Star Wars — and the magical fact that the characters speak our language — to as many people as possible. Hopefully, this is just the start, and we’ll see dubs for hundreds more languages in the future.