Translating Broadway for a Latino Audience

From Art&Seek, a service of KERA, Public Media for North Texas.

The AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas has been experimenting with something no one else is doing with Broadway tours. A recentperformance of Motown at the Winspear Opera House featureda simultaneous, Spanish-language translation of the live show — a first for a Broadway production. Butit’sa bigger challenge than you might think. For one thing, the Spanish-language actors have to hurry to translate the lines before the actors on stage burst into song.

The project is called Broadway en Espanol. Mike Richman, vice-president of marketing for the AT&T Performing Arts Center, says the reason for the program is simple. Forty percent of the Dallasarea identifies as Hispanic or Latino. And when it comes to speaking Spanish, “about 450,000 are Spanish-primary or even Spanish-exclusive, and we thought it’d be a good idea to reach that group.”

See the whole story over at KERA.