[Werking Title] with Eliza Lambert: Nuria Net on Bilingual Pocdasting
By: Eliza Lambert-Arnold
The first in our series starts with Nuria Net, a storytelling powerhouse with an impressive resume, who specializes in bilingual podcasting. While most makers worry over monolingual projects, Nuria and her production house, Shake It Easy Media, create well beyond translation. Nuria is broadly celebrated for a rare specialty: bringing out the nuances in the great diversity of Latinae oral culture.
Recently, Nuria and Eliza Lambert-Arnold chatted about Madrid’s audio scene, the state of the podcasting, and how multi-language adaptations are the future of podcasting.
Eliza Lambert-Arnold: What do you consider your first job?
Nuria Net: My first paying job was as a clerk in the Metro desk of The New York Times. It was clerical work. I remember they were very stern about it. "Even if you're in The New York Times, don't think you're going to be a reporter. You need to pay your dues around here."
But obviously, I was there because I wanted to be a reporter and work in journalism. So I guess I learned to just follow my instincts. I never got a byline.
But you know what happened during that clerkship as well? The immigration reporter – who covered immigrant populations, including Spanish speakers – didn't speak Spanish. So you know who had to step in to translate during an interview with the mother of an immigrant who had been murdered?
Me, the clerk, who was just supposed to sit there and pick up the phone. I had to do a real-life translation with this bereft woman, poor thing, who had lost her son, and The New York Times reporter, with everything that entails. Did anyone pay me for that? No. But I did it very willingly and happily and I was so glad that I was around so this interview could take place. And I was really shocked that the immigration reporter didn't speak Spanish. I'm sure that's not the case anymore. This was 20 years ago.
ELA: What an accurate representation of what the industry was going to be like, though.
NN: Exactly. So I was like, “I need to be here ‘cause I need to tell the stories. I can actually understand literally what's going on.” The importance and just being able to speak the language and understand the communities – it's huge. That's why those stories get told when someone is able to make those connections and speak up for them.
ELA: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great origin story. I think from there, given now that you've had all this experience from that, when you look at a story, how do you know it’s a story you want to tell?
NN: From a story perspective, if we can be that cultural translator -- the cultural nuances, the different accents, the different vocabulary, the different communities – and help make whatever story really relevant and authentic, and not just one size fits all, you know?
ELA: If you could fit or create a genre for yourself, not that it doesn't exist, what is the type of reporting or work that you specialize in?
NN: I would love to tell more stories of Latin music. Latin music is very broad, but still underrepresented and undertold. Music touches so many things, right, in culture, society, history. I do have a lot of pitch decks and things in development that have to do with that, uncovering or telling those stories from the past that are still relevant, how they influence today's pop culture, pop music. To be able to do them in English and in Spanish is important because there are Latinos who don't speak Spanish or it's not their first language and [having access to these stories] would really enrich their sense of identity or history as a community. Obviously, there's non-Latinos who are also interested in this. So making stories as widely available as possible is very important for me as well. And then in Spanish, because obviously.
ELA: I think that's a really good transition into the question of bilingual podcasting, which I consider you to be one of the few people who very consistently has been making that content. What do you think are some of the very common mistakes that are made when someone is creating bilingual content?
NN: Here's the first thing I ask whoever I'm talking whoever's inquiring about the services: “Who's your audience? Do you want to talk to U. S. Hispanics? Do you want to talk to Latin Americans in those countries? Spain?” And sometimes I've been met with, "I don't know, what do you think?" Asking me. And I'm like, "Oh wow, you really don't know the landscape.” Like 20 percent of the population of the US, you know, are Latinae. Some speak English, some speak Spanish, some speak both. It is complex and nuanced and that's where I can come in. Definitely, it's not one size fits all. You need to think and identify your audience just like any other podcast and make certain decisions based on that. Consider accents and localization. People in Mexico speak very different from people in the Caribbean or in Argentina. That's not to say if I'm not from Mexico, I'm not going to listen to a Mexican story or vice versa. Actually that's another misconception: people from one country don't want to listen to other accents. On the contrary, for me, if a story is set in Argentina, I love listening to local vernacular. I might not understand every single thing, but that gives it its richness. It's like when you watch a movie set in Ireland or in the U.K. Especially if it's a documentary, you want that authenticity. If the story, the details and all the local color, you can give the story, including the accents, the better. Obviously, if you have in mind you’ve a wide audience, then you might explain some things or give some context. Not everything is going to be insidery to that culture. That's fine.
Coming from TV and, the U. S. media world, there's this thing called ‘neutral Spanish’ in telenovelas and certain types of content in which the characters or the talent are speaking a neutral Spanish. It's literally a Spanish that no one speaks in real life, but they were doing that because they wanted to appeal to all the Latinos who are very varied in the U.S. That's passé, that's very old school, that's very clichéd. It's not sophisticated. It might have its audience, but in audio that doesn't really work. One size fits all is not the answer, at least that's not the content I like to make or consume.
ELA: That's fascinating. Have you ever had to present in neutral Spanish yourself?
NN: Once you live among people from different nationalities, everyone looks for that. For example, ‘trash can,’ something as simple as a 'trash can.' In every country, there's a different name for that thing. But there's also the original name, 'basura'. 'Basura' is trash. So it depends on the context of where you are, literally in your workplace or in your community, you adapt to your situation. That's a immigrant thing. And people who are digital nomads stay in their bubble. But it's part of code-switching.
So after living in the U. S. for 15 years, I've learned slang and vernacular from other countries, even though I haven't lived in those countries necessarily. That's also the beauty of living in New York or Miami. I had Colombian friends, Venezuelans, Mexicans, Argentinians, and they learned my Puerto Rican slang. You learn how to code-switch in that way.
Actually, I was just, um, reading an interview with one of the Pulitzer Prize winners, this Mexican author, and she was saying that Spanish is a second tier language in the U. S., even though, in terms of numbers, I think the U. S. would be the second country in the world in terms of Spanish speakers. There's so many Spanish speakers, I think it's 63.7 million Latinos in the U.S.
Out of those that speak Spanish, I don't have the numbers, but 20 percent of the population. It's a very young audience, median age of 30, and the GDP is more than the entire U. K. So imagine the economic powerhouse of the Latin market in the U. S. Yet, the representation of Latinas in mainstream media and content is only 10%, so it's very underrepresented. But of course, as the population grows, that's gonna change, so that's my whole value proposition.
ELA: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'd love you to tell me about the media world in Spain. I know you're not just doing audio, so more broadly?
NN: Spain has a very strong radio tradition that has kind of evolved into podcast and on-demand audio. There's a lot of platforms. Audible is here, Podimo, which is a Dutch audio app, a player in the space. Now most of the major newspapers and media groups have audio divisions. There is a healthy ecosystem and a lot of conferences. There's these awards, which we won one for the punk show, Ondas Awards, which is the Pulitzers of Spain. All those institutional things have been created – the awards, the conferences. But just as the rest of the world, with the ups and downs in the industry and prioritizing talk shows and celebrity shows and video talk shows, which are cheaper, get more audiences... so those have been prioritized over maybe some other types of narrative shows or content. It's indicative of the industry at large. I wouldn't say it's that much different. The thing is because of the language with Latin America, the audience is so much bigger. What I would love to do more is create those shows that can travel between Spain and Latin America. In Spain, they're still a bit too insular and doing stuff just for Spain, whereas I would like to do stuff that's more broad.
ELA: Congratulations. That's really awesome. My final questions are where do you think the industry is going or advice for people joining the industry now? Are either of those interesting to you?
NN: I think that the trend about the Latinos and the diversity, that's inevitable. But I don't think it's trendy yet, you know. It's not in Pod News, but that's what I would like to evangelize.
