Guillermo Romero (Talavera de la Reina, Toledo 1967) gives voice to Disney icons such as Lightning McQueen or Remy and has played the character of Desmond Miles (Assassin’s Creed) both in movies and in video games. Owen Wilson, Chris Pratt, Ryan Reynolds are some of those actors, heroes or good people in fiction, to whom Spanish has lent. Viewers may also remember Romero for having been the presenter of the most recent stage of the contest The fair price and music programs on TVE.
-You put the voice to the superheroes and Lightning McQueen, are you a hero for yours
-That’s it. I put the voice but since they know me at home, I don’t impose them, ha, ha.
-He is currently dubbing a Turkish series Kara Sevda, for the Divinity channel. Is it the most exotic thing you’ve done
-Yes. While on vacation my mother-in-law saw it by satellite and told me about it. This week I have dubbed chapter number 45. And we still have 205 more to go, so I have leash for the whole year.
-How long does it take to record an episode, which is half of a movie
-It is recorded by bands, so each of the main dubbers in one morning does the four or five episodes of the week. We have to do them alone.
-Do you listen to what the others have recorded
-No, I’m ahead in this case. My character is the one who opens the melon, on Mondays at eight in the morning, and the others are added.
-You see the chapters before at home
-It’s not usually done like that. If it’s a very important movie, for security reasons, they send you to the United States to work there, like Superman, Batman. The usual thing is to arrive at the studio first thing in the morning, with all the text, and the director guides you on what the chapter is about. To dub what is needed is a well translated and adapted text. The actor’s own work gives you clues. A good actor is usually easier to dub.
-As the plots progress, the tone of the character takes
hold -Yes. In the case of Kara Sevda, my character takes a big hit because her girl has disappeared and in the following chapters she has a lot of grief, a lot of resentment… you take that pose.
-Turkish dubbing is more difficult than other languages
-The problem is that we are not familiar with the music of Turkish, with the intentions of the phrases. In an American movie it is easier to guess the intonation. Turkish sounds monotonous to us, so what we do is take it to our terrain and give it the musicality of our language.
-Is a telenovela easier, or more difficult, to dub than an independent movie or a blockbuster
-It always depends on the actor. In Kara Sevda, the actors are very well directed and although the soundtrack does not accompany it, we have shaped it. A series that lasts a long time is more difficult because it forces you to keep the same record for each character.
-Of your dubbed actors, which one do you stay with
-I wouldn’t know what to say. I stay with any superhero because it makes my son excited. The typical character that I usually do is that of a handsome, friendly boy, with whom the girl falls in love, everything gets complicated and in the end it is resolved. I can identify with the feelings of the characters, or with situations, more than with actors.
-And someone who has been recognized by the voice
-A Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy or Jurassic Park. Children love knowing that I am the voice of Lightning McQueen or Ratatouille.
Are they obsessed, as they say, with the fact that the phrase fits in the actor’s mouth
-The perfect cocktail is that the text is so well adapted and adjusted that when I put the voice it seems that the actor is speaking. The interpretation depends on the actor. You put the naturalness. There is also another challenge: matching the sound of the original film in dubbing.
-Some actors work with large sets, outdoors, and you have to draw inspiration from within four walls…
-They are not the same conditions, of course… it is important to adjust in the mouth, we do not relax, and it should look good . The dubbing directors even try to fit the lipsticks, but the interpretation depends on each one.
-Will there also be words impossible to fit, as would happen with Turkish
-There are more expressions. In the Turkish series there are some cries that we soften in Spanish, because otherwise the characters would look like goatherds.
-Do they still give you what they say to see only the original versions
-I would not recommend watching a Turkish series, or a German tabletop TV movie, in original. There are Hollywood productions that are meant to be enjoyed on full screen, without reading subtitles. Perhaps for an intimate film, to check the work of some actors, the original version is better. There are great actors to listen to, but there are also others who improve their work.
-How does Turkish sound to you
-Sometimes it
seems to me that it is Korean and in others, Arabic. I haven’t fully grasped the musicality yet.
-The greatest merit of a voice actor is that we don’t finish evaluating it
-Each job has its merit. Sometimes it’s complicated to start doing voices at eight in the morning, when you arrive with your problems. If it is well done, the doublers go unnoticed.
