INTERVIEW
LILIAM HERNANDEZ, CEO, UNIVERSAL CINERGIA DUBBING
The Global Dubbing Odyssey of Turkish TV Series By OBEN BUDAK
T
oday, the Turkish television industry enjoys widespread international acclaim, with Universal Cinergia Dubbing (UCD) standing as a key player contributing to this global triumph. Liliam Hernandez, one of the founding partners of UCD, has been actively involved in the crucial process of bringing Turkish dramas to the Latin American market and introducing them to audiences worldwide since 2012. In our conversation with Hernandez, who played a pivotal role in organising the Turkish Drama Gala as part of the Content Americas programme, we delve into the evolution of the Turkish television industry, its current success and the role UCD has played in this journey. We also take the opportunity to inquire about the intricacies of Hernandez’s company’s work and the lessons they have learned from their experience. This interview opens a window to explore the story behind the surge in global popularity of Turkish drama, and to gain a closer understanding of UCD’s role in this success. The rise of Turkish TV series all over the world actually started when they were first noticed, loved and watched in Latin America. With the company you founded in 2012, you have been and still are dubbing Turkish TV series in Spanish. Can you tell us how this process started and progressed? My partner Gema Lopez and I have been interested in Turkish content from very early on and we decided to take a trip to Istanbul and meet the Turkish content producers and introduce our services. We were the first dubbing company to travel to Istanbul in 2012, and that’s how everything started. In a short time you have become a company with recording studios in five different countries. You do dubbing and subtitling in different languages. Which of the TV series you dubbed were the most watched/broadly aired TV series? Can you list the top 10 series in this regard? Our company has been in business for 11 years, and we have dubbed several titles in this period, not only Turkish content. We have clients all over the world and we dub a very large number of titles into Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Castilian, German, Italian and other languages. Among the several titles we have dubbed we can mention in no particular order: Golden Boy, Farah, That Girl, Chrysalis, Hicran, Broken Destiny, A Mother’s Love, Forbidden Fruit, Our Father, Poison Ivy, Woman, among other successful Turkish titles. Other titles include Bel Air, Outlander, The English, Liar, Sisi, Wynnona Earp, Bolivar, Hotel Portofino, La Brea, El Senor de los Cielos, La Reina del Sur, and so many other titles. You provide services not only to TV channels but also to other platforms such as HBO Max and Amazon. Has this changed the way you work? Actually the change was for the better, because our workload increased considerably with all the streaming platforms that are now in the market. Streamers need localised content in several languages and we can provide multi language dubbing
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