Lately I’ve been having the privilege of helping direct and record the voices for the Portuguese version of South Park’s 12th season – it’s been quite an amazing experience. It’s very interesting to attempt to convey the message presented in the original version in another language… sometimes it’s a lot harder than it might seem. The most difficult aspect that I’ve encountered so far are some of the jokes….some of them simply don’t work in Portuguese as they do in English.
Take this one, for example. In the first episode of the season, “Tonsil Trouble” (Original Air Date: Mar 12, 2008), Cartman keeps repeating “I’m not positive, I’m HIV positive”.
In English, the catch clearly works. In Portuguese… eh, not so well. After playing around with the words for about half an hour, we came up with a solution that allowed us to convey the same idea and still be comical, even though it lost a bit of its kick – sometimes a necessary compromise when dealing with international dubbing. I’ll post up a clip of the final dubbed version as soon as possible!