Javier Fernandez-Peña To The Rescue!!
Javier is a hugely experienced Spanish voiceover artist, with a huge amount of varied projects under his belt. He was the voice of MTV’s Spanish channel from 2000-2010. The main narrator for Hallmark ‘s Spanish Channel. A role which involved not only introducing the films, but also dubbing all the male characters parts for every trailer, which was a fun experience. He worked for Bloomberg for a number of years, along with Nickelodeon, so a huge spectrum of voice types. He’s currently working on a project with us, as the voice of Betfair in Spain, recording daily adverts for them.
One of his favourite roles in his career came through working with The Voiceover Gallery. It was to voice a character in The Incredible Adrenalini Brothers. A short cartoon series that was really eccentric and really fun to do.
Spanish-Mode Buzz Lightyear
Hollywood came calling in 2010 and when he became the voice for Spanish mode, Buzz Lightyear. One of the casting agents flew all the way from LA, just to hear him read and decided he had the perfect voice to connect with an English speaking audience. He even got to shine at the Oscars, when a clip of his bit was used to introduce the film for an award. This job opened doors for him and led to other great projects.
Approach To Creating The Spanish Version Of A Character
When creating a Spanish version of an existing character, Javier always tries to be faithful to the original. Aiming for a similar tone to the source voice, whilst still putting his own spin on it. If something is being re-versioned into multiple languages, it’s even better when he can listen to the other translated recording, to get a feel for how the transcreation is going.
Working with The Voiceover Gallery
Javier says working on language projects with The Voiceover Gallery is always great, as everything is under one umbrella which makes a big difference to the project. Having scripts translated by experienced, native audio-visual translators means it makes his life so much easier, as they always fit the new language to the visuals, so he can fit to the timings that he needs to achieve. When this isn’t the case, he can be left looking at the number of words in the Spanish version, compared to the English… and then starts to sweat!
He said Kate Hutchinson is a great agent, always on-it and there for him, a brilliant problem solver and tough but fair with clients so that the best results are achieved with projects.
How He Keeps His Language Skills Sharp
It might sound counterintuitive but long holidays in Spain, ideally 3 or 4 months, are the key to keeping his voiceover skills sharp. Talking to lots of people and watching Spanish TV. Javier has lived and worked in London for 30 years, so in order to keep up his language skills and native intonation, takes practice. He has to keep his ear in, to maintain a voice range broad and allow him to take on younger jobs. It’s so important that he makes sure that he’s keeping up with changes in how people talk in Spain.
Visit Javier’s profile and listen to his VoiceOver reels.
