Dominik Kuhn (pseudonym: ''Dodokay''; born September 16, 1969) is a German producer, language artist, comedian, director and musician. He is the owner of the production company STARPATROL Entertainment. He got famous in Germany with Swabian fandub videos, synchronising, among others, the

Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama (, ; ) is the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is part of the full title "Holiness Knowing Everything Vajradhara Dalai Lama" (圣识一切瓦齐尔达喇达赖喇嘛) given by Altan Khan, the first Shu ...

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

in Swabian German dialect.

Biography

Dominik Kuhn was raised in

Reutlingen Reutlingen (; ) is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is the capital of the eponymous Reutlingen (district), district of Reutlingen. As of June 2018, it had an estimated population of 116,456. Reutlingen has a Reutlingen University, univ ...

. He did his

Abitur ''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...

in 1989. While in school, he started a rental company for event technology and worked simultaneously at a local radio station as music editor, DJ and sound technician. Later, he also worked as an independent audio engineer and started producing radio commercials and music, before he began to producing films. He produced some commercials and low-budget films and worked as an actor, especially in regional productions. He translated a couple of

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

novels for Dino Verlag in Stuttgart, among others for the ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...

'' series and the German version of '' Magic: The Gathering''. Dominik Kuhn speaks Dutch and English.Interview on StarWars-Union.de
/ref> Using a pseudonym, ''Dodokay'', Kuhn got famous with Swabian fandub videos, which have been published on various video sites such as

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, Clipfish and MyVideo. In 2007, a ''

'' parody about

viral marketing Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way th ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

found hundreds of thousands of fans. Despite some copyright conflicts, he gained fame in the mainstream media and quickly received offers to do such spots professionally. In the case of the Star Wars video, Kuhn also made a version in "Swabian English". In 2008 he started to produce a fandub news parody, called ''Die Welt auf Schwäbisch'' (The World in Swabian), for one of Germany's public broadcaster SWR's TV channel SWR Fernsehen. The original text is not translated but completely changed. Among the news report clips featured were

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

'Swabian edition' with former French president Nicolas Sarkozy explaining software features and

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...

doing the weather report. Kuhn found new tasks coaching various celebrities and actors in Swabian and was asked to work and lecture on viral marketing campaigns. A B2B video for

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

, about the "LAN-Ball", an allegedly remote-controlled football, is among his professional campaigns. Dodokay also created fandubs of Barack Obama's 2009 and 2013 Berlin speeches; in both version he placed Obama in front of an assembly of home owners in a Stuttgart mansion. Similarly, rather Swabian problems with neighbors cleaning the car at 5:30 in the morning were used for a fandub of the

. German public broadcaster ZDF used Kuhn's fandub of a Romney-Obama TV discussion to start reporting about the outcome of the 2012 US presidential election. Another German public broadcaster ARD had a Silvio Berlusconi phone call leading to embarrassment during a NATO summit 2009 fandubbed by dodokay. Kuhn is a jury member for the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis for German science fiction.

Awards

He received the Friedrich-E. Vogt Medal for his work promoting the Swabian dialect.Mundartgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg e.V.
/ref>

References

External links

STARPATROL Entertainment

dodokay.com
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuhn, Dominik Living people 1969 births German male musicians German male actors 21st-century German male artists 21st-century German translators German male comedians People from Reutlingen Male actors from Baden-Württemberg Comedians from Baden-Württemberg