More at: https://www.voboss.com/bilingual-vo-101
Transcript
>> It’s time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry’s top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let’s welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.
Pilar: Hola, BOSS Voces. Bienvenidos al podcast con Anne Ganguzza y Pilar Uribe.
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and I'm honored today to bring back very special guest co-host to Pilar Uribe. Pilar, how are you today?
Pilar: Hola, Anne. Cómo estás?
Anne: See, I need to start learning from you. Hola. Hola. So I am so excited to have you on this podcast because first of all, your journey is amazing, and our journeys are always ever evolving, right? And --
Pilar: Yes, oh yes. Oh, absolutely. Constantly.
Anne: There's so much that our podcast listeners can learn from you. So I'm, I'm excited to continue that conversation. And I want to talk today about bilingual, what it means to be a bilingual voiceover actor in today's industry. And, you know, back in the day, I grew up in a very small town, and I was never really exposed to anyone that spoke a different language. And my exposure to let's say another language was my high school that said you can take French or Spanish, you know, for as many semesters as you'd like.
And so I picked French, which I now think maybe I should have picked Spanish because I feel like that would be really useful to me today. But yeah, I was not exposed -- and it's one thing to be exposed to the language, but I was not really exposed to the culture. And I think it's so important for us to talk about that because as business owners, we serve many different communities. And it's so important for us to understand the community that we are serving and to be able to speak to them in the way that they're accustomed to and be able to serve their needs the best that we can.
Pilar: Yes, this is very true, Anne. You know, I was born in New York, and both my parents were from Colombia. So that was all I knew because I spoke Spanish at home until I went to school in New York, and then I spoke English. And then when we, when we got home, we would speak only Spanish. And so every Sunday, my mother would make a traditional meal called ajiaco, which is this wonderful soup with chicken and corn and sour cream and chives, and it's like, it's so delicious. And we would listen to Colombian music. And so I grew up steeped in the culture. So it was like, there was stuff at home --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- what we did at home. And then there was school.
Anne: School.
Pilar: And --
Anne: Where did you learn English then.
Pilar: I learned English in kindergarten.
Anne: Got it.
Pilar: Well, I guess it started in nursery school 'cause I went to this playgroup where there were kids from all over. And then in kindergarten, I went to Convent of the Sacred Heart. And I think there was one other person who spoke Spanish. And of course, you know, when you're a kid, you catch on really quickly. So there was like maybe one or two people, one school friend, she spoke German, somebody else spoke Spanish, but that was also the custom of the day, which is that you learned that -- French was what was offered. I don't remember, at least at Sacred Heart, I don't remember Spanish being offered. When I switched schools, when I went to Spence across the street, they did have Spanish, but I mean, I already knew it.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: And so in New York, at least there was really no Spanish culture per se. You know, every so often of course I would hear Spanish being spoken, but it was in pockets. And so it was my home life, and then there was school life, and it was almost like never the twain shall meet. And so I, I grew up with a very Hispanic background because my parents wanted to give that to us, but I didn't see it reflected outside. That wasn't really until much later that actually it's, you know, you started seeing it, at least, you know, where I grew up.
And so of course, my family, we would have -- lots of friends would come over, and they would speak Spanish. And so that was very fluid. But for example, I know friends who, whose parents were, they were not interested in teaching their, their children Spanish. So they have a very Latin sounding name and they don't understand Spanish. Thank God that my mother wouldn't let us speak English when we got home, because my career is basically been bilingual my entire life.
Anne: So then, if I can ask, 'cause I've, I've looked this up multiple times, and I'm seeing some kind of different answers in different places. So then should I refer to the community as Hispanic or Latino or what is the difference there, if you wouldn't mind? I've got multiple places that kind of say they're the same, but yet they're different or they're mutually exclusive.
Pilar: So it's, it's really strange. And I think us Hispanics, we don't even know. The word Hispanic -- I mean, when I was growing up, you were a Latina. A Latina was just, you were a Latina, which means you were from Latin America.
Anne: Right, it referred to a place. Yes.
Pilar: Yeah, exactly. So then Hispanic came along. If I go and I look at the term in Wikipedia, it says the term Hispanic refers to people, cultures, or countries related to Spain, the Spanish language, or hispanidad. So it embraces, because obviously we can't forget about Spain.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: So it embraces Spain obviously --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- and the Americas where Spanish is spoken. And so Latinx is something that has not been around for that long. And it has to do -- see, for me what I understand it, 'cause I was like, what is this Latinx? 'Cause I was -- I would always hear of it for people who were gender neutral.
Anne: That's what I --
Pilar: Who were gender fluid. But that doesn't mean that everybody who is a Latina is a Latinx.
Anne: Correct.
Pilar: So that's where it gets tricky and where people kind of sit there and they go, well, how do I refer to myself as? And so, you know, I'm an American because I was born in this country.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: And I speak Spanish.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: So for me, I would say I'm Hispanic because that's basically just the way that I referred to myself my entire life. The Latinx thing is something that's sort of come about in the last five, six, seven years, I think, which is fine. But for me, ultimately, I'm a Latina. Yo soy latina --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- and that's kind of -- you know, for Americans, I'm Hispanic, but I'm a Latina because that's how I grew up, una latina.
Anne: And it's Latina, because you're female, is that correct?
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: And then Latino, is that --
Pilar: Yes. But then sometimes -- I know it's so bizarre --
Anne: And Latinx might be inclusive of non-binary or --
Pilar: Exactly. Non-binary.
Anne: Got it.
Pilar: That's exactly what it is, but because the Latino -- and because we have that differential in Spanish, because a Latino can also be male or female because I've had -- los latinos is like --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- that's like everybody.
Anne: Right, right.
Pilar: You know, like, that's like so -- people just go overboard with trying to define the labels, you know?
Anne: I guess, I guess it's just safe to assume that it's a personal matter, how you'd like to be referred to, right, for each person --
Pilar: Agreed.
Anne: -- then. Okay.
Pilar: Agreed.
Anne: All right.
Pilar: And I think it's kind of like everything goes.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: I mean, it's not -- well, at least for me, you know. I can't speak for everyone.
Anne: Well, it's good to know because I, you know, I had questions I'm like, well, I'm not quite sure because again, when I grew up, I really was not exposed to really many people that had different cultures. I remember when I moved from my small town in upstate New York to New Jersey, I met so many people with so many different cultures, and I was like, this could have been good for me back in when I was growing up. But anyway, so now the question is, you speak Spanish, but there's so many different dialects, right?
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: And there's so -- many people need different dialects depending on again, what group you're speaking to. And I say group meaning buyer. If you're doing a voiceover and somebody hires you for that, they usually request a specific dialect of Spanish. So what are the different dialects and what, what are the differences between them?
Pilar: Okay. So if you're talking, if, you know, if we start with Spain, which is [?], the Spaniards have a very, very different way of speaking. And so it's really interesting because Spaniards are some of the most lovely people, but the way they speak, it's almost like they're shouting at you. So [speaking Spanish] and so everything is just all, everything is always screaming. And that, I just said a bad word, by the way.
Anne: Oh.
Pilar: But you didn't understand, which is good.
Anne: See?
Pilar: So yeah, but it's, it's very, very guttural and it's, it's hard to explain. It is very, it's very tough sounding. So that's Span -- that's the Spaniards.
Anne: Okay. So does that mean if somebody hires you to do some international work, and you needed to speak Spanish that was directed at people in Spain, would you speak in that delivery?
Pilar: Probably, because I actually have been called to do that.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: And also of course, and this is, again, nobody really knows because this is just conjecture, but the Spaniards, they have, they have a lisp. So supposedly, and some peoples, historians debate on this, but I want to say it was Phillip II or Ferdinand, I can't remember, but one of the kings had a lisp. So to cover, all the courtiers started lisping to cover his lisp. So instead of saying cerca, I'm near, estoy "therca," estoy therca. And then like canción, a Latin American would say, I'm singing a song, estoy cantando una canción, in Spain you would say estoy cantando una "canthión." It's the th instead of ss --
Anne: Right, right.
Pilar: -- just for that particular C. It's not all the time.
Anne: So there's Spanish from, people from Spain.
Pilar: Spanish, Spain, right. Then they call this neutral. So neutral has a variety of connotations because neutral Spanish is actually, and this is something that I heard many years ago, when they say neutral Spanish, they actually want you to sound more Mexican. Because actually in terms of buyers, the largest minority of Latins is the Mexican --
Anne: Mexican. That makes sense.
Pilar: So I want to say it's 89 million, but that might be an old figure. And so the Mexicans have a very distinct accent, if you go to different regions of Mexico. The reason why they ask for it is that it's a flatter way of speaking because when you start hearing different regionalisms, there's a lot of lilting. There's a lot of (singsong) and there's a lot more accents. The Mexican is pretty close in terms of being the flat, which is why they ask for it.
Anne: They call that the --
Pilar: They call it --
Anne: Neutral?
Pilar: Neutral Spanish, yes.
Anne: Neutral Spanish.
Pilar: But that's kind of code for -- it's, it's kind of more tilting towards the Mexican.
Anne: Right. Because of the larger population, I'm assuming.
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: That's what --
Pilar: Yeah. And it's the consumer, right? Exactly. But here's the funny part. And again, the VO BOSS listeners might disagree, but the accent in Colombia, the way Colombians speak, is probably some of the best Spanish in all of Latin America. It just happens to be that way. I'm not speaking out of line.
Anne: Well listen, I will tell you, I have to tell you this because when I worked in education, my boss for a good 18 years, he was from Colombia. So when he would get angry, and he would kind of go off into a different language --
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: -- it was very interesting. It was, I don't know it was lovely actually, but again, I never knew what he was saying. He was probably saying bad words, if he was angry at me or, or whatever. But it's interesting because he had an accent for 18 years, and he was, gosh, he was one of my, one of the best bosses I'd ever had. I mean, it was like half of my life that I worked for him. So I got to know him from his accent in English, but didn't ever really hear him speaking Spanish too much, except for once in a while, when he would talk to maybe his wife that would call or whatever, if I overheard him on the phone.
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: Or if he got angry.
Pilar: Yeah. But so Colombian Spanish is grammatically, it's probably the closest to Spanish from Spain.
Anne: Okay. But then I imagine there's different regions in Colombia. Right?
Pilar: Totally.
Anne: Okay. And then you'd have like a different dialect for each.
Pilar: Right, because you've got like, for example, the coast, um, [speaking Spanish] it's kind of like Southern, it's like the equivalent of Southern, it's and it's very, uh, it's, it's a great like people from Baidupar (?), [speaking Spanish] and then you've got Baices (?), [speaking Spanish]. There's a beautiful accent from Medellín. And then the region from Bogotá. There's all kinds.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: Where my family was from, Ibagué, it's just, it's a very funny kind of accent. They're all very different. And so that is important because a lot of the times when you are auditioning for something, they're going to ask you, because I get asked all the time. So you've got, like, let's say you've got Colombia, you've got Venezuela, and Venezuela, their accent is different, but it's more in line with the, because like for example, Caracas is on the coast. And so there, that accent is a coastal accent, and it's very close to the coastal Colombian accent from like a Baidupar, from the coast of Colombia, which is closer, not the same thing, but it's closer to like central America. So central America, you get into Dominican, which is very different. They speak at like 30,000 miles a minute. I mean, it is so crazy. You can't understand them.
Anne: So then, may I ask, when you get an audition, right, are they specifying the dialect or?
Pilar: Yes, yes --
Anne: Okay --
Pilar: -- now they are, now they are.
Anne: -- all the time now there, because before this, I mean, bilingual has always been a thing, but I think lately it just was assumed that Spanish was maybe one or two different dialects. And, and I know for a fact, when I do a lot of telephony work, they would specifically request certain dialects of Spanish that they would want on the prompts. And so I think probably even now, right? So if you are not familiar with a specific dialect, do you go and study that before you audition? Or how does it, how does that work?
Pilar: Yes, yes.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: I actually have a coach who is --
Anne: Oh, okay.
Pilar: -- she's great. She has, she knows all kinds of, I mean, dialects from all over the world. So and so I'll, um, I have some, some things that I, that I recorded with her. And so I'll just, I'll go to my notes there because even something proximity wise --
Anne: Sure.
Pilar: -- Cuba and Puerto Rico, there's a very big difference with the accents. And I've been asked to do a Puerto Rican accent, and I've been asked to a Cuban accent. Those are the two that I get called to, sometimes Mexican. But a lot of the times what they're looking for, what I'll do, for example, when I'm doing an audition, and they're looking, they're asking to do the neutral Spanish, is that I will tone down. I will be very aware when I'm speaking of my Spanish, because I do have some regionalisms in my Spanish, and people who know, who have an ear and speak Spanish, native speakers --
Anne: Absolutely.
Pilar: -- they will hear it immediately, so I can disguise it. It's practice. That's basically, it's like, if you want to put on a Southern accent, a Southern accent from Alabama is very different --
Anne: Oh yeah.
Pilar: -- from a Southern accent from Virginia.
Anne: Exactly.
Pilar: So it's just a matter of being aware of what they are, and it starts in the mouth. So it's, it's great to get together with a coach. And for example, when, when they ask you for a British accent, and they're asking for an upper-class British accent, versus they're asking for a Scottish accent, 'cause a lot --
Anne: Sure.
Pilar: -- you know, I get, I get those kinds of things for like video games. You just have to be aware, you practice, you get online. I actually did a, um, an ADR for a movie that came out, and I didn't know the language. So I got hired and he said, you speak Spanish. And I had worked with this looping director before and I said, yeah. And he said, okay, this is, this is a little different, you're going to have to practice. And I thought, okay, great, wonderful. So I start practicing, and it's this thing called Nahuatl, which is from a region in Mexico. And it's not really something -- it's a language, but it's not something that is spoken often at all.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: And this was for a big Marvel movie. So I started going online. There's very few videos, but I get ahold of them. I find somebody who speaks Nahuatl. And I speak to her and I realized this language has nothing to do with Spanish. And I'm like, uh-oh. So I literally phonetically had to learn phrases. And, and we had that all prepared because the looping director gave us time, but it was like, oh wow. This is a completely different language. This is not Spanish at all, but it is spoken in --
Anne: Spanish.
Pilar: -- Mexico.
Anne: Yeah, exactly. Wow.
Pilar: So yeah, it's limitless amounts of variations. And if you're a native speaker of Spanish, you have to be very aware that you're not dealing with just one --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- the way your voice sounds.
Anne: Exactly.
Pilar: You have to be able to adapt.
Anne: Right. And not only just in the sound of it, right, or the accent of it, but I would say performance wise as well, right? There's styles in which people speak their language.
Pilar: Yes. One of the things that I get called to do is to do a spot, and I have to do it in English and Spanish. And so first of all, Spanish is always longer. It always takes double the amount of time because we talk a lot. So double the amount of time what I say in English in Spanish.
Anne: Oh, right, because you talk a lot, meaning the words to translate are twice as many.
Pilar: Totally. Yeah.
Anne: Okay. And you call it the bilingual two-step, I saw on your website or somewhere I saw that.
Pilar: Yeah. Because it really, it takes literally double the amount of time to say it in Spanish as it does in English. And so Spanish is a beautiful language, and it's very descriptive.
Anne: So I don't mean to interrupt --
Pilar: Go for it.
Anne: -- I'm just thinking like, what if somebody that's not familiar, right, says, okay, I've got a 15-second or 30-second spot in English and oh, by the way, can you do it in Spanish? I assume that presents issues because you might have to do it much faster or you might have to maybe make some different changes and because you can't fit all the words in, is that correct, or?
Pilar: Yes. So I'm much more -- I didn't use to be vocal, and I'm much more gently -- and obviously you have to do this in a democratic kind of a way, so you don't ruffle people's feathers.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: And they were aware of that. You know, copywriters are aware of all that today, which they didn't use to be, that they have to shorten it because otherwise you end up sounding like a chipmunk --
Anne: Right, right.
Pilar: -- trying to get it out. And also the way a Latina like me expresses herself in Spanish is completely different from the way I'm going to say it in English. And it's the same copy.
Anne: Now, how, performance-wise, if I might ask? Like, so you might say it in Spanish differently, would you be, I don't know, more excited or more dynamic or is -- what's typical?
Pilar: I think it's in the way, the way the words are said, it's just different, because, because the actual sounds --
Anne: -- they go together differently.
Pilar: Yeah. They go together differently. Okay. So here's something -- let me just see if I have it in English and Spanish. Okay. So this is -- I did something like this and it's, it's an Amtrak spot. "Did you think of the first person you're going to go visit?" Okay. That's in English. I'm just making that up. "¿Ya piensas de quien va ser la primera persona que vas a visitar?" So it's like two completely different people.
Anne: It is.
Pilar: And I don't know how to explain that, but --
Anne: It is.
Pilar: -- it is.
Anne: But that brings up a question, which I've always wondered about. So let's just say you have, you're doing a live directed session --
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: -- and the person that's directing you doesn't know Spanish. You have to know, right, you have to know the delivery.
Pilar: Oh yeah.
Anen: You have to know the nuance or does it happen that you don't always have, you know what I mean, a Spanish speaking, if you're doing Spanish and English or -- what's that like?
Pilar: No, generally, actually, no, whenever I do live directed sessions, there's always somebody -- they may not speak it fluently, but they completely understand the language.
Anne: Oh, okay. That's good to know.
Pilar: You always have somebody there who knows.
Anne: That's good to know.
Pilar: But as a bilingual speaker, I feel like it's my job to make it easier for them. So I try to -- when they ask me and they're like trying to fish for a word, like, I don't like jump in, but I try to help them out, because it's difficult. Like I've done this my whole life. You know, I'm constantly in my head translating from English to Spanish --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- Spanish to English.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: And so sometimes people just don't have that facility. I just happen to do it all the time.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: So if I can help them with a word or something --
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: -- I do. I'll step in, and I'll say it.
Anne: Yeah. And that makes so much sense. I have really, honestly, I have such respect. I think everybody learn multiple languages. Really. I think it's such an education, not just culturally, but just, it's so many things you can get by being bilingual in your own personal development, really, so much you can learn.
Pilar: You know, when it's a whole world.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: I mean, when I, when I studied French, it really, really opened it up because I was seeing so many parallels between Spanish and French. And I was like, oh, okay. So now I get why this, these are Romance languages. And then, you know, one time my family, my mother and my, my father and I, uh, we were invited to a wedding in Italy. And it's a really good friend of mine who is getting -- married an Italian gentleman. And I thought, well, why don't I just, I'm going to learn Spanish on the sly. And so -- not, not Spanish, Italian. And back in the day, dating myself, we had Walkmans right?
Anne: Yup. I had one of those.
Pilar: So I got a bunch of cassettes. Exactly. And I listened to it all the time. And my father would look at me like I was crazy. 'Cause he was like, 'cause I didn't say what I was doing. I was just always with the Walkman on. And so when I stepped off the plane, I was speaking Italian, and we could get around because I was speaking Italian. I didn't speak it that well, but I understood it. Now Spanish is very different from Italian, but there are a lot of words --
Anne: They're similar.
Pilar: -- that are the same, so --
Anne: -- if I -- yeah.
Pilar: So yeah, so it was really cool to be able to kind of navigate in that world because I had help.
Anne: And it's important. I say that because the many times that my husband and I've gone to Italy now, I don't speak Italian, but my husband grew up with his grandparents speaking Italian, and his mother and father, not all the time. It wasn't -- he wasn't required to speak Italian. They were born in America, but his grandparents. And so he had enough knowledge, but thankfully he had that knowledge. And when we stepped off the plane into Italy, I mean, you just, you gotta be able to get around.
Pilar: Yeah, yeah.
Anne: And so I know very few words, few words, enough to like enough to get a gelato. But -- and to say please and thank you.
Pilar: Exactly. And mi porte un po de panni? You can get a -- you can get, go very far. Can you bring me a little bit of bread?
Anne: Yup.
Pilar: Mi porte un po de panni? That'll get you anywhere in Italy, and there'll be grateful and they'll start flirting with you --
Anne: Yup.
Pilar: -- and they'll offer you wine. And, you know, whatever. I'm always in such awe of voiceover artists whose Spanish, who, you know, it was not their first language, but they learned it, and they speak it really well. You know, they may not be native speakers --
Anne: Right.
Pilar: -- because obviously fluent and native, they're two different things.
Anne: Exactly.
Pilar: But a lot of the times I will hear a really good Spanish accent, you know, over the, if, you know, if I'm in a train station or whatever, and you can tell the person is not native, but their pronunciation is flawless. So there's obviously a market for that.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: And that comes through practice.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: You have to practice, you know, and how do you practice? You, you read out loud, you -- and, and I do that. I mean, I'm, I'm a native speaker and I do that on a pretty regular basis. I'm reading a book in Spanish on my Kindle. And so I will read it. I will read entire passages out loud because I need to hear myself --
Anne: It's like a muscle.
Pilar: -- and go -- yeah, exactly.
Anne: Right? It's a muscle.
Pilar: You need to practice it.
Anne: If you're not going to be speaking -- I remember my husband's father when he used to talk to the family in Sicily. And by the way, Sicilian is different from Italian and different regions --
Pilar: Totally.
Anne: -- there as well. I mean, his father knew enough, but also was very, it was very stressful for him to talk to the family because they would just be talking a mile a minute. And he was trying to get that back into his muscle memory and also speak it. He used to come off the phone. I mean, he'd be sweating. You know? So I can imagine, I can imagine what it's like being bilingual like, first of all, hats off and mad respect to anybody, you know, that speaks another language and can do it in fluently and -- because there's, there's work involved in that, that is a muscle memory and practice and all sorts of things.
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: And I was thinking that it affords you some other opportunities in your voiceover business, such as -- I imagine you do a lot of dubbing.
Pilar: Yes, yes.
Anne: I imagine people ask you to do translation or proofreading services. So there's some other things that you can add as a service to your business as well by being bilingual.
Pilar: Well, and also, yes, I agree with --
Anne: If you choose.
Pilar: -- everything you just said.
Anne: If you choose to want to do, you know, translation --
Pilar: Yeah.
Anne: -- or proofreading or those things.
Pilar: But even, even just knowing, maybe not being completely fluent, but even knowing a good amount of words and practicing those words -- because here's what I'm starting to see in a lot of copy is English copy but like a couple of Spanish speaking words --
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: -- will sort of sift in there. And so if you can say it -- because a lot of the times I'm called and I can't completely make it in Spanish because people will be like, huh? What is she saying?
Anne: Right.
Pilar: But I can, I can add -- there's some spots I used to do. So instead of saying "this time on Colores" -- so I would never say Colores in regular.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: But it's not CoLORes.
Anne: Right, right. Right. You have to have the accent. Yeah.
Pilar: It's somewhere in between. So it's helpful to have an understanding of the sounds that another language makes, because I'll tell you, it's helped me. I can do German. I can -- I don't speak German. I can do Portuguese because it's basically about developing the ear. You know, a lot of times I'll hear a voice actor or somebody say, oh no, I can't speak. It's like, do you have a pair of ears?
Anne: It's all about the --
Pilar: If you have a pair of ears, you just, you, you, you train yourself. Again, it's like what you said before. It's like a muscle. Train and develop that.
Anne: And you know what, it's so interesting that you say that. I mean really, training your ear is, a lot of it, even just being conversational and, and understanding what a lot of people don't understand, what a conversational melody sounds like, because they've never really studied it. Right? Because all of a sudden --
Pilar: Yes.
Anne: -- now, we're being asked to speak these words that didn't come from us and sound conversational. Well, there actually is a melody to being conversational and there's a melody to all of it. And so the process of training your ear is not something that happens overnight. That's for darn sure. You know, I just know that from the many students that when we go through our, you know, how are we speaking conversational or how do we get there? It takes a long time to develop the ear, but it's definitely something that can be learned, but it does take a lot of practice. A lot of practice.
Pilar: It takes a lot of practice, but if you do it just five minutes a day --
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: -- and you, and you take a little piece of a newspaper in Spanish -- so just when I first got to Colombia, I had a little bit of an accent in Spanish. And my director was very strict, and he said, okay, you got to go get rid of that. And it was the slightest thing. It was like in the S's. And, and I, I was aware of it, but I was like, I don't know how to get rid of it. So I worked with somebody, but what I really did was I watched telenovelas all day long. And sometimes I would just, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even look at the television. I would just listen --
Anne: Right, just listen.
Pilar: And I would repeat over and over again. That's how I learned Italian by myself.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: And so everything is possible --
Anne: Immersed yourself in the sounds and melody of it.
Pilar: Yeah. Exactly.
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: It's just having it around you, and you don't need to spend that much time on it, but you can --
Anne: Yeah.
Pilar: -- if you do it on a daily basis, you are going to improve.
Anne: I think it has to be consistent. Wow. There's so many other things I want to talk to you about being a bilingual voice talent. And I think we're going to be continuing that in our next episode, but this was a great beginning to talking about, I guess, the depth of what it takes to be a bilingual voice actor. So I thank you, Pilar. I'm going to say my last question to you is going to be okay, so now you know what our new series name is, right? Okay, so it's BOSS --
Pilar: You want to unveil it?
Anne: Well, it's BOSS, and it's voices in Spanish. So how would I say that?
Pilar: You would say BOSS Voces.
Anne: BOSS Voces.
Pilar: Or if you're from Spain, you would say BOSS Vothes.
Anne: Oh.
Pilar: La voth. Por qué --
Anne: La voth.
Pilar: -- muy linda, Anne. Entonces, yo te puedo hablar todo el día, si quieres.
Anne: Oh.
Pilar: I just went overboard in Spanish.
Anne: Okay.
Pilar: I said you had a lovely voice --
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: -- but for Latin Americans --
Anne: Yes.
Pilar: - it's BOSS, BOSS Voces.
Anne: BOSS Voces.
Pilar: Voces.
Anne: Voces, voces.
Pilar: So with Spanish, you pronounce all the vowels. So it's ah, eh, ee, oh, oo, right? It's not A E I O U.
Anne: Right.
Pilar: So it's BOSS -- So you would say, maybe you would --
Anne: BOSS --
Pilar: -- you could give it a little, kind of a, a little sexy lilt. go BOSS Voces.
Anne: BOSS Voces. BOSS Voces.
Pilar: There we go. You got it.
Anne: There we go. Well, now you guys know our new series' name. Thank you so much from my first, my first lesson from you. As always, it has been amazing to spend this time with you. BOSSes, we want you to have an amazing week. If you want to connect and network with amazing people like Pilar, you can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week and we'll see you next week. Bye.
Pilar: Fue un placer, Anne. Nos vemos. Ciao.
Anne: Ciao.
>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.