Inside the Weird World of International Dubbing in Latin Spanish (By DLM Internacional)
- Dec 12, 2017
- 3 min read
The strange commercial world of dubbing Latin Spanish has generated new concepts of how movies should be dubbed for this market. New countries, new Spaniards, a world that breaks the tradition of what was considered neutral Spanish for Latin America.
THE LANGUAGE DOES MATTER
NETFLIX and then movie theaters throughout South America were the first to revolutionize the way of watching movies in Latin America. That concept that the Latin American preferred to see the subtitled movies has ended up showing itself as a hoax before the industry. How much money have the distributors lost for believing such nonsense?
Dubbing has been popular in countries such as Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, among other countries, especially South America since the '90s, while smaller territories got subtitled versions, which are cheaper to produce. But as international box office has become increasingly important, especially for animated and family-oriented films, the studios are making ever-bigger investments in dubbed versions at a cost (If DLM International does)of up to $6,000 to $80,000 per territory. motivated because dubbing in Latin America is cheaper than in Spain and is aimed at 500,000,000 Spanish speakers. A very low investment that gets millionaire benefits.
"These films are doing so well that you can justify the cost " says Imax's Andrew Cripps, a veteran international executive who previously headed up Paramount's international operation.
DLM Internacional present in the region since 2010, Latin America is now one of the main growth targets for the company specialized in dubbing and translation. "The region is an extremely important one for us and boasts some of our biggest clients, be it for the import or export of content in various genres. The continued growth of online streaming services allows content owners to reach beyond their local borders which in turn has brought a surge in the demand for high quality localization combined with a fast turnaround time.
This year, the company appointed Brian Gómez to the role of Head of Sales for the region, supervising the Hispanic market in the US and Latin América. (Internationalrelations@dlminternacional.com)
Mr. Gómez defines DLM Internacional as a company that specializes in "localization" more than translation, since local cultural references, dialects and idioms are fundamental in its work. "As a localization specialist, it is our responsibility to know each region, each culture, and each dialect inside out, hence the importance of having a local presence. Latin American Spanish is one of the most demanded languages that we are requested to localize. Thanks to our team of in-country professionals we can offer subtitling and dubbing services, from any language in the world to Latin American Spanish. It is only necessary that the script be delivered to us with quality in the English language, the executive said.
"It's this attention to detail and the superior quality of our projects that has given us the reputation that we now hold."
"Within our international team we have the necessary talents and skills to localize almost any content genre. "The content genres that are commissioned to us are mostly dependent on viewing trends and what’s most popular at that time. For example, the last 12 to 18 months have seen a huge increase in popularity in original series, extreme sports, and kids’ TV programming. As such we have collaborated on localizing many of these productions, both for subtitling and dubbing." But I have to admit that every day more, we get more projects for the dobale than for subtitling.
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