Spanish Localization – Multimedia Projects
Posted on Mon, Nov 02, 2009
We're very happy to welcome back Teodoro Alonso, one of our wonderful guest bloggers. Teo's talking more about Spanish variants today (see his previous three posts on this topic, starting with Spanish Translation: The Big Picture of the US Market). This time he's sharing his thoughts on localization of multimedia...
My two-year old son loves to watch TV. His favorite cartoon series are "Curious George" and "Backyardigans," from Discovery Channel, and I like them as well. They are very different from the cartoons we watched in my childhood: "Tom and Jerry," "Supersonics," old Hanna-Barbera stuff. They were dubbed into a very characteristic Spanish variant, more like Mexican than my native Iberian Spanish. And they were funny...
A neutral Mexican Spanish was the variant we could expect from any TV series or film, until relatively few years ago, mainly because Mexican voices were cheap and near the production centers. Disney, for instance, has only one 'neutral' Spanish version (made in Mexico) of their films until "Little Mermaid"; from this blockbuster, all their films have a local version for Spain and a neutral version for the rest of the Spanish-speaking countries. And most of Hollywood companies follow their lead in this subject.
Does that mean we need two Spanish versions for a multimedia product? No. Despite differences, all Spanish speakers understand one another quite well and are used to hearing or reading regional variants. For instance, in the U.S., Don Francisco (Chilean) always does OK with Cubans, Mexicans, Colombians, etc. on TV.
It's relatively simple and cheap to find Spanish voice talents with a neutral tone, so they can be considered as native for most of the Spanish-speaking markets: some of the cartoons I mentioned before are dubbed by Chilean studios, other by Mexican or Venezuelan companies. But a client who wants to have a product localized with Spanish voices has to be very careful with the selection: people tend to make fun of strange accents, and a marketing campaign or TV program with an accent or tone different than the target country will surely not be successful. You have to consider target audience.
Telemundo, a U.S. Spanish-language television network, decided to train the actors of their telenovelas (prime time soap operas) to speak like Mexicans, specifically, like Mexican television news anchors. Anyone aspiring to become an actor in a Telemundo telenovela must be able to speak in a well-paced, accent-free rhythm, whether they are originally from Cuba, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru or Chile. Univision, who is the leading Spanish-language television network in the U.S., also encourages accent-free Spanish among its actors, but it does not enforce it like Telemundo does. For Telemundo, this "neutralized" Spanish is the middle ground between Colombian Spanish, too fast and terse for their audience, and some Caribbean accents that are, in their opinion, too slow and imprecise. Does it work? Well, they are targeting the 60% of U.S. Spanish that are Mexican descendants, so no wonder their audience is increasing.
Note: Sometimes I hear from a client or colleague that Colombian Spanish is the most neutral Spanish variant, so they want us to localize their product into this language, although the target market may be Latin America or all Spanish-speaking countries. Yes, some people said Colombian is the most pure and neutral Spanish accent, but you can't translate a written document with a specific oral accent. As always, it's our job to help the client understand this, so that we can provide the best service.