Dubbing Game of Thrones for Spanish viewers

The production of Game of Thrones is an expensive, globe-trotting affair, and the work has only just begun once the show has finished filming its scenes in its picturesque locales. Los Siete Reinos, a Spanish-language A Song of Ice and Fire fansite (“los siete reinos” translates to “the Seven Kingdoms”), got the chance to visit SDI Media in Madrid, Spain, where the show is dubbed for Spanish-language viewers.

The writer was there to witness the dubbing of this week’s episode, “The Gift”, which means the article naturally lets slip a couple of spoilery things. Their description of the sound booth where actors record their lines leads to discussing some generalities about a scene between Gilly (also known as “Eli,” evidently) and Maester Aemon. (It came down to figuring out how to respond to the way Maester Aemon’s dubber delivered a line. The article is well-written but this is an aspect of production I wish we could actually see and hear.)

But the big news comes at the end of the article, where the writer drops two hints about the episode. The first is that it’s better than “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” (not a difficult feat). The second is that something happens in the episode that does not happen in the books, but is something fans have been waiting on for years. The writer describes it as being “as surprising as it is brilliant.” Honestly, if this isn’t Ramsay’s head earning a one-way ticket to Pike Town, I doubt it will be very satisfying for anybody. Nonetheless, it does intrigue me. Are they simply referring to [spoiler]the Battle in the Ice[/spoiler], which has been built-up but has yet to occur? Is it something happening at the Wall that explains [spoiler]why Gilly and Sam’s stories have been altered? (Gilly and Maester Aemon are in the episode, in a scene together, after all.)[/spoiler] Is it something else entirely?

Teasing aside, the article also features some cool tidbits about the Spanish voice-dubbing community. Laura Pastor, for example, voices Gilly for Thrones but is also the voice of Dr. Cho in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Violet in The Incredibles, and Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. Maria Blanco, who voices Daenerys, won Video Game Female Protagonist Roulette, as she voices both Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite and Ellie in The Last of Us. (She is also Anastasia in Fifty Shades of Grey. I… sort of want to watch that movie in Spanish now.) Even the dubbing director and main subject of the article, Antonio Villar, is in on the action; he dubs for the conniving Littlefinger for the show.

One particularly fun aspect of dubbing is how sometimes lines have to be slightly altered from their original meaning; that way, the Spanish lines can be read clearly and cleanly in the same amount of time it takes the English line to be said on-screen. As an example, Daenerys’ line “I’m a queen, not a butcher” becomes “I’m a queen, not meat.” The line conveys more or less the same sentiment, but is shorter in Spanish, and therefore easier to say completely in the time it takes Emilia Clarke to say the original line.

Here are some other interesting dubbing tidbits: It takes a day and a half to record an entire episode of Game of Thrones, which includes organizing schedules for 48 actors, but it takes 10 days to actually finalize a complete, 50-minute episode in time for airing. (The day after “Kill the Boy” aired, the dubbing team received the season finale so they could begin work on that.) Even individual takes on lines can take up to a couple of hours, depending on the difficulties the lines present to the production team and the actors.

Can you imagine having to say “cock merchant” for two hours? Well, maybe someone’s already made an hour-long loop of that scene for YouTube.

• Published on 05/23/2015 at 3:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:04 PM CDT