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Linguistic consultants for series and films: “My job is to make the viewer believe that an actor from Madrid is Andalusian”



Speak with Galician or Basque slang in just a few weeks. This is how language consultants work in a multilingual country with very distinct regional identities, where the issue of dialects is a challenge in many audiovisual productions.

Combining different languages ​​and dialects in the same movie or series is becoming increasingly common. speak in it Ice BeastsMovie premiere Rodrigo Sorogoyen, in which French, Spanish and Galician are mixed. Also in Rose weddingFrom Jessie Bolinwhere Candela Pena The rest of the actors spoke in Valencia in some scenes. or in PrivacySeries Netflixin which the Basque language plays an important role.

But this was not always the case, if we review Spanish films, they are full of productions in which their protagonists play roles that require them to have an accent different from their language: Javier Bardem Galician accent deep sea also It’s Cuesta in the mess you leaveAnd the Penelope Cruz in Andalusia in your eyes girlSuch as Blanca Suarez s Maria Pedraza in The summer we are living in. If we look at the fine print of the credits in these same films, they all involve a language consultant.

They are responsible for working with actors and actresses so that they acquire, as closely as possible, the tone required by the production. One of these professionals is Federico Perez. He was the language consultant for deep sea, a project in which the majority of his team were not Galician. However, it was important for it to sound like that (at least through speech) in order to “give more credibility to the story”, as he noted in an interview with EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA.

Amenbar did not consider a language advisor character, but Javier said he wanted to be as similar as possible to Ramón Sampedro”

The usual thing is that the director or director uses this service, but in this case it was Bardem himself who requested it. “Alejandro Amenabar I wasn’t thinking of a language advisor character, but Javier said he wanted it to be as similar as possible to Ramon SampedroAnd speaking was necessary. Another distinguishing feature of the shoot was the short time it was working, barely two months. “He came from work before darkWhere he gave life to the Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenasfor which he had been working for nearly a year to get the leave & rdquo;.

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different techniques

In this process, as with many other tasks, there is no single way of working. Moledo Pink She has been a language consultant for 30 years and has been part of projects such as: FarinaHe has been working on the script since the beginning. “It’s not just about the accent, but the manner of speaking,” he explains. So remember The first thing he did when he joined the drug trafficking chain was to process the text on paper So that the structure was similar to the Galician language.

The second part was the follow-up with the actors. “Theory helps them find a place because when you don’t know the language, you tend to change adverbs or pronouns.” Then work on phoneticswhich is “the hardest part because here a lot depends on the skill of each person, hearing plays a very important role,” notes Moledo.

Many of the representatives of Farinha, who were accustomed to working outside their society with a neutral accent, had to restore their natural accent.

one of the properties Farina Most of the cast were from Galicia, but this, he points out, is a double-edged sword. “Many of them are used to working outside of their community, and in most productions they are required to have a neutral accent.” In this case, the work process is reversed. “They had to restore their normal toneWhich was a challenge, because each one has its own idiosyncrasies.”

In the case of Federico, remember that in deep sea He worked first on the acoustics, then on the script. “The work consisted of making a lot of call to prayer, and we listened to a lot of recordings of Sampedro himself, and then imitated his way of speaking,” he says. Both insist that it is not so much an imitation of the dialect itself as an understanding, “It’s like learning a new language that you don’t know,” he adds. Molero adds that the most important thing for her is “To learn grammar and theory, and then already by ear& rdquo;.

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After this stage, it’s time to work on photography. “It is one of the most important moments, because it is where errors appear and where new working formulas have to be investigated to gain magic,” says Moledo. However, in many productions, they ignore the function of the language advisor at this point, “something incomprehensible, because necessary & rdquo;

Another distinguishing feature of the strip is that there are always actors or actresses working with the same coach. Although this tends to happen more in larger products than Hollywood. Federico adds: “This is especially the case when you are improving your English and choosing to star in American films.

The actors have the accent of the series

“Accent is your treasure, never lose it.” That’s what Lola Flores said. However, this is not always the case in the film industry. There are many examples that show that in a large number of productions, the main roles are played by actors and actresses imitating a certain dialect, rather than original actors, who already naturally possess it. Reason: a marketing issue. “A protagonist like Bardem, Penélope Cruz or Luis Tosar is a guarantee of success, and after all, the film industry, as its name indicates, is a business.” Molero explains. Therefore, as in any business, economic benefit is always pursued.

But in order to understand the plot of certain productions it is necessary that the particularities of that particular place be reflected, and for this the language is essential, although it is not always taken into account, as the Canarian actor explained but put forward in Malaga. Save the queenThe protagonist of a series like There at the bottom or movies like The little islandfor which “it is clear that the closer the accent is to the actor, the more believable the story & rdquor;

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Molero goes further. “I I support the production of series and films in their own language. A few years ago this would have seemed more ideal, but why watch a Korean or Turkish series, however, that cannot be streamed in Galician on a platform like Netflix or HBO? & rdquo;.

However, this situation may lead to another common problem on the big screen: Identity clichés and dialectal discrimination. In the case of the Andalusian, for example, it has been associated on many occasions with certain roles related to the lowest social classes. “There are still people who think that an Andalusian cannot play the role of a scientist or a politician,” says Salva Reyna.

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Not just with Andalusians. Stigmas regarding dialects are a motto in our society and thus in cultural production. Serious Basques, shy Galicians, Andalusians or Catalans doing their own thing are just a few examples. Although this scenario seems to be fading little by little, as the Spanish language teacher explains, Lola Pons. “You could have a minor player playing a minor role as a pharmacist who attends to the main actress, and they both have Andalusian accents and that’s not important in the plot or in the way the characters act.”

Another problem is that this dialect is not imitated properly or faithfully, and leads to parody or mockery. “Imitation of accents is part of what comic entertainment can make up, and aggression toward another is not in that accent but in the validity we give to the character,” Pons explains.

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