Spanish dubbers are desperately seeking stardom of their own

Desperate Housewives in Spanish


Spanish dubbers are desperately seeking stardom of their own

01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, February 22, 2006
BY MIREYA NAVARRO
New York Times News Service
http://www.projo.com/tv/content/projo_20060222_dubbers.1270592e.html

LOS ANGELES -- In a small sound studio late on a Wednesday night, Larisa Asuaje is channeling Teri Hatcher. She sighs, giggles and gesticulates wildly with her hands, speaking in the halting, nervous ways of Hatcher's character, Susan, in Desperate Housewives, only in Spanish.
She looks up at Hatcher's lips on a screen, which are saying, "I need an operation on my spleen, and I just found out I don't have medical insurance."
"Is there anyone I can sue?" Susan asks. "Hay alguien a quien pueda demandar?" Asuaje repeats simultaneously.

Asuaje describes dubbing as "translating the essence of the person into another language." It is what she does for other actors while she herself -- an actress who has theater, film, soap operas and television commercials to her credit -- waits for her own big break.
"I'm honored to do that voice," she said of Hatcher's vulnerable Susan. "But to be honest, there's a part of me that says, 'I wish I could be there.' "
In Los Angeles there are those who wait tables, those who park cars and those who find other ways to pay the rent while pursuing their Hollywood dreams. Bilingual actors like Asuaje, 36, have another option: following others' speech tics, mimicking their emotions and matching their m's and p's, so voices do not come out of closed mouths.
Performing in anonymity -- no credits, always heard but never seen -- the actors who dub movies and television shows into Spanish here are a fringe group even among the people who do the voiceovers for television commercials and, more prestigiously, animated feature films and television series such as The Simpsons.

To dub in Spanish, say those who do it, usually means earning a modest $12 to $20 an hour, being heard mostly in other countries and scrambling for work. Most dubbing jobs have migrated to places such as Venezuela and Mexico.
But things are looking up for Asuaje and her fellow dubbers. Last fall ABC announced that it would dub such top-rated shows as Desperate Housewives and Lost to attract the growing audience in the United States of Spanish-language networks such as Univision. The Spanish translation of these network hits is heard through the Secondary Audio Program option on television sets, which is available to more than 85 percent of American households.
The secrecy surrounding the story lines of the ABC shows, and the tight deadlines for broadcasting each episode in both languages, has meant the dubbing must stay home, specifically Burbank. But more important to dubbers such as the Spanish-speaking Desperate Housewives, whose pay has been bumped up to $25 an hour, being connected with a hit brings the hope that some of the success will rub off.
They are thinking about exposure, meeting the right producers and ultimately winning a role that would pluck them out of the shadows.

"There's that saying, 'You may not be a thoroughbred, but if you're a fly on the tail of a thoroughbred, you're a thoroughbred fly,' " said Marabina Jaimes, the voice of Brenda Strong's character, Mary Alice, the dead narrator of Desperate Housewives.
"We'd like producers to realize we're actors and can do these roles in front of the camera," she added.
What Spanish dubbers -- who are also playwrights, translators and stunt doubles, and give their voices even to car navigation systems -- may have over the rest is a tight-knit fellowship in which everybody knows one another and learns about dubbing work strictly through word of mouth.

Dubbers like Jaimes and Asuaje dub only a few hours a week and draw most of their income doing ads for companies such as Bally Total Fitness, AOL and Home Depot, in both English and Spanish. It's not a bad living, but they couldn't be farther from the glamour of such red carpet awards shows as the Golden Globes.
There was not a stylist in sight last weekend when the Spanish-speaking Desperate Housewives gathered in Griffith Park for a photo shoot. Gabriela del Carmen, 43, who dubs Felicity Huffman's Lynette, walked around carrying her own plastic bag of makeup. Purses and other belongings went not into a trailer but the Honda SUV of Jaimes, also in her 40s, who said jokingly, "I don't have champagne, but I have water."

Among the seven women, some had known one another from years of freelance dubbing work, even roomed together, and all easily fell into laughter and gossip about ex-husbands (only two remain married). So small is their Hollywood subculture -- the working ranks of Spanish dubbers number in the dozens, by most estimates -- that the Spanish-speaking Edie, Bree and Gabrielle of Desperate Housewives can also claim to have been Huey, Dewey and Louie on dubbed Disney cartoons.
Rocio Gallegos, 51, a career dubber from Mexico who directs some of the dubbing sessions of Desperate Housewives and herself dubs Betty Applewhite, the mysterious housewife played by Alfre Woodard, says that for the actors, dubbing is a form of performing-arts school where they can learn technique from the best.
"I love Alfre Woodard," said Gallegos, who has also dubbed Kathy Bates in movies and whose own son, Humberto Amor, 31, dubs Betty's son, Matthew. "That seriousness. She's dramatic without raising an eyebrow."Gallegos does not physically resemble Woodard.

As it turns out, blue-eyed del Carmen is vivacious like Huffman, and Asuaje is thin and brunette like Hatcher. Marcela Bordes, who dubs Edie on the show, is a blonde (who won't reveal her age) much like Nicollette Sheridan, the actress who plays Edie; Ana Grinta, also ageless, has the cool sexiness of Marcia Cross; and Ivette Gonzalez, 42, has the smile and perkiness of Eva Longoria, although she herself notes that after two children "I'm twice the size of Eva."
Their love life may not be as convoluted as the going-ons on Wisteria Lane, but these desperadas come with their own eccentricities.

"You meet someone, and you're, like, 'My God, what a horrible voice,' " said del Carmen, who is divorced and, unlike the others, has no children. "I'm thinking, 'Why doesn't he breathe with his diaphragm?' "