Setting up a Spanish voice
- Record 5 to 15 seconds of a native speaker with the accent you want: Castilian, Mexican, Argentine, Colombian, Caribbean.
- Set the voice's Language to Spanish.
- Generate a few test lines, including a question and a number.
Accent and variety
The sample decides the accent: distinción or seseo, the Rioplatense "sh", Caribbean softening. The script decides the rest, so write in the variety you want heard. A Mexican voice reading vosotros and coche sounds odd to a Mexican audience; an Argentine voice should get vos tenés, not tú tienes. Match the vocabulary and grammar to the sample's region.
Writing Spanish for the voice
- Every tilde matters. They change words: esta / está, papa / papá, si / sí, tu / tú, el / él, mas / más. A missing accent can change both the meaning and the stress.
- Opening marks: write ¿ and ¡ as Spanish normally does. They help anyone reading the script, and the closing mark is what lifts the end of a question.
- Numbers: thousands and decimals are written differently across the Spanish-speaking world (1.250,5 or 1,250.5), so write them as words: mil doscientos cincuenta, tres coma cinco.
- Dates and times: el tres de marzo, las nueve y media rather than 3/3 or 9:30.
- Abbreviations: Sr. → señor, Dra. → doctora, EE. UU. → Estados Unidos, etc. → etcétera.
- English brand names may get a Spanish reading. Respell them if you want the English sound.
A passage to record
Hacía semanas que quería grabar esto, así que aquí va. Es una tarde tranquila, el café está listo y por fin tengo
unos minutos para mí. A ver cómo suena.
"I'd been meaning to record this for weeks, so here goes. It's a quiet evening, the coffee's ready and I finally have a few minutes to myself. Let's see how it sounds."
A dialogue to test with
Ana: ¿Ya llegaste? Te estoy esperando desde las ocho.
Luis: ¡Perdón! El tráfico estaba imposible.
Ana: Bueno, ya estás aquí. ¿Pedimos?Spanish for different markets
One script rarely suits Spain and Latin America equally. For both, make two scripts with two voices, one from each region, and adapt the vocabulary in each. Have a native speaker from each market review the takes. See translating a voiceover.