Comments on: Obama on Univisión: Lost in Translation

By: translationguy

translationguy — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:10:39 +0000

Sounds to me like this is not a VO artist but a simultaneous interpreter. The dual Spanish-English dubb technique used here we call UN-style VO. In the translation business, this is best practice, and what we tell our clients is best for their audience. So I’m really surprised by everyone’s negative reaction.

I’ve heard from my American Spanish-speaking friends how annoying those old movie dubs could be, but I had no idea that this kind of translation would produce the same reaction. Up until I read this post I would have been proud to deliver a professional job like this.

Jose, I don’t know the netiquitte on this, but I will be posting on this at my blog later today, in hopes to get more feedback from viewers to see if others are as irritated by this type of presentation as you and your commenteers seem to be. Thanks to all for the head’s up.

By: Gibran Haq

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:35:57 +0000

So I think they might have picked the guy who did Obama’s VO from some talent agency that specializes in recruiting generic-accent VO talents that are only suitable for live soccer games or after-hours testimonial TV ads. I mean, really,

WTF is this crap anyways?

Does this just go to show how little the people at the top care about what the Hispanic audience ultimately HAS to digest?

By: sarainitaly

sarainitaly — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:11:03 +0000

I HATE when they voice over but still leave the audio of the original. In italy they do that all the time. My ear automatically wants to hear the english, but it is too quiet, and the italian is too muddled with the english, so I can never understand either. They REALLY need to mute the original language, or subtitle.

I would love to hear the interview, and the issues on immigration. I don’t think they were addressed in the other interviews.