Upon watching a report about Shrek 3 on TeleMadrid's "Madrid Directo" I started thinking about English language (or other langugage) movies dubbed into Spanish.

The report on Shrek 3 particularly made me think because it's an animated movie starring, among others, Justin Timberlake, Cameron Diaz, and Antonio Banderas. All three were recently in Madrid promoting the movie.

But then I started to think, "Hey. 99.9% of Spaniards going to see 'Shrek 3' will see it in Spanish and so NONE of the voices of Justin Timberlake, Cameron Diaz, nor, probably, Antonio Banderas will be heard by those movie-going Spaniards.

So why do these actors promote the animated movie in Spain if their voices will never be heard? The simple and obvious answer is, "It's their job." But isn't this a deception in the case of ANIMATED movies? I understand a NON-animated movie being promoted by the actors because it's their faces and bodies onscreen even though their voices are not.

And specifically regarding Antonio Banderas, he's Spanish, yes, but I'm rather certain his SPANISH voice is not being used for the part of the swashbuckling cat. And why? I suppose because the company contracted to DUB ("doblar") the movie isn't willing to pay Antonio Banderas the money he'd require when they can pay Juan Carlos, a professional "dubber", a tiny fraction of the salary.

I started thinking of this earlier today when I was channel surfing the TDT TV stations and came upon a channel which was showing some teen soap opera. There were no voices in the program whatsoever, just sounds affects of people walking, soccer-playing-kids in the background, rustling of clothing, etcetera, but no voices. I have my LCD TV set to an "English" format so, I'm only guessing, that since an "English version" wasn't available the voice audio was left blank or absent. But this only happens on some channels, not all of them. For example, movies/programs on TVE1 are broadcast in Spanish no matter their origin. But most American sitcoms/movies on TeleMadrid are broadcast in their original version, in English with the original voices. Other times the American TeleMadrid programs are only broadcast in Spanish.

Any comments or insight? Saludos, MadridMan