JOHAN FRANZON teaches translation, interpreting, Swedish, and Nordic studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland, besides publishing academic work on the subject of song translation. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on musical comedy translation in 2009, studying the Broadway musical My Fair Lady (1956) as translated into Scandinavian languages (1959–1960), focusing both on the fidelity, singability and theatricality of the translators’ work. Aspects of that study are discussed in Franzon’s article “Musical comedy translation: Fidelity and format in the Scandinavian My Fair Lady” (in: Song and Significance. Virtues and Vices of Vocal Translation (ed: Gorlée), 2005).

Working to explore song translation as a field of translation studies, he has described five basic choices in the translingual traffic of song (“Choices in Song Translation: Singability in Print, Subtitles and Sung Performance”, The Translator 14:2, 2008), six methods for target lyric writing in the international exchange of pop songs, from near-enough to all-new (“The liberal mores of pop song translation: Slicing the source text relation six ways”, in Song Translation: Lyrics in Contexts (eds. Franzon, Greenall, Kvam & Parianou) 2021), as well as a conceptualization of song translation as a layered combination of approximations and appropriations (“Approximations and appropriations. Making Space for Song Translation in Translation Studies”, in MikaEL 15 (eds. Hartama-Heinonen, Ivaska, Kivilehto & Koponen), 2022). Some of his work is available on ResearchGate. His latest publication is a co-editor of a special issue of the journal Studia Translatorica 15: Song Translation Studies, available online.
 

As a song translator, he translated a few musicals into Swedish (The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret) into Swedish, before his academic career in Finland. Lately, he has translated Finnish children’s songs into Swedish and is currently working on an opera that will be produced in both Finnish and Swedish in Helsinki in the fall of 2025.

ALBERTO MIRA is a professor of Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University, where he teaches classes on Film Styles and Film Stardom. He has translated several essays into Spanish and edited Oscar Wilde's letters for Alba Editorial. He has also published editions of The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee for Cátedra. Among his numerous publications are the essays De Sodoma a Chueca and Miradas insumisas, as well as a large number of articles in academic and popular magazines about Pedro Almodóvar, Eloy de la Iglesia, Eduardo Mendicutti, Jane Fonda, Mario Casas, and others. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Spanish Cinema published by Scarecrow Press. His publications include The Pop Musical: Sweat, Tears and Tarnished Utopias and Entre la cámara y la carne. El cine homoerótico en 25 películas. His latest publication is El teatro musical de Stephen Sondheim, and he is currently preparing a complete Spanish edition of the lyrics of Cole Porter.

IÑAKI TORRE holds a degree in Hispanic Philology and is co-author, alongside Nicholas Saunders, of the Manual de traducción y adaptación de canciones para doblaje y teatro musical (Translation and Adaptation Manual for Song Dubbing and Musical Theater), the first work in Spanish entirely devoted to this subject. Currently, he participates as a teacher of musical translation and adaptation for the Escuela de Doblaje de Canciones, and has also taught courses on this subject at the University Jean Jaurès of Toulouse. He combines his job as a teacher with the adaptation of lyrics into Spanish for various theater groups. He has adapted The Last Five Years and Godspell into Spanish, as well as numerous songs by authors such as Jason Robert Brown (Songs for a New World) and Jonathan Larson (Rent) for the musical ensemble Broadway Revisited.

JOAN MANUEL SEGURA-GUISCAFRÉ holds a Degree in Philosophy from the University of Barcelona. He has completed various courses in song translation and adaptation and has performed in musicals such as The Rocky Horror Show and Shrek. His directorial credits include productions of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Grinch: The Musical, for which he also served as the translator and adapter. He is currently completing his Master’s Degree in Advanced Theatre Studies; his final thesis focuses on the role of songs in character development within Little Shop of Horrors.

ANNA RĘDZIOCH-KORKUZ is Associate Professor in the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Her main research interests lie in theoretical translation studies, with particular reference to the relationship between translation and semiotics, the problem of translation constraints and a general theory of translation. Her research concentrates also on opera surtitling and singable translation.

Dr. María José García Vizcaíno is currently a Professor and Head of the Department of Spanish and Latin Studies, as well as Director of the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Translation at Montclair State University, where she teaches courses in Translation and Audio Description. Her main line of research focuses on audio description, touch, art and blindness. Specifically, she is currently working on a project on tactile resources in art museums and on the role of touch as an accessibility tool for sculpture. She has published numerous articles in academic journals and has given many lectures at national and international conferences.

RAÚL GALOPPE is a Professor in the Department of Spanish and Latino Studies at Montclair State University in the U.S. His research interests include theater of the Spanish Golden Age and the translation of musicals for Spanish-speaking audiences. He teaches courses on theater, film, and audiovisual translation. As author or editor, he published Género y confusión en el teatro de Tirso de Molina (Pliegos, 2000), Explorations in Subjectivity, Borders, and Demarcation: A Fine Line, with Richard Weiner (UP of America, 2005), A Stubborn Ghost: Essays in Honor of Henry W. Sullivan (Peter Lang, 2023), and many academic articles.  As a playwright, he wrote and directed three musical plays: Decadencia divina (1983), Con el pie derecho (1986), Este soy yo (2023), in addition to several revues: Los más dulces sonidos, Gustavo con V corta and C’est Magnifique, which were presented in Argentina in 2024. He also translated Mark St. Germain's masterpiece, Becoming Dr. Ruth. He is currently working on a new theatrical production and a project involving audio description.

MARTA ZABALLOS DEL RÍO is an attorney at SGAE, specializing in intellectual property across the music, audiovisual, and publishing sectors, as well as technology contracts, advertising, and intangible asset management.

ALBERT MAS-GRIERA is a writer, scriptwriter and song adaptor. Graduated in Philology and Psychology, he is the author of the novel Escrit als estels, as well as of La ciutat dels àngels, a collection of stories. He adapted into Spanish, for the productions directed by Ricard Reguant, the songs from the musicals Chicago, West Side Story and Grease, and into Catalan, Blood Brothers, Blues in the Night, Memory... For Disney, he adapted into Spanish the lyrics of The Lion King, Toy Story and Beauty and the Beast 2, and into Catalan the lyrics of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan... He also adapted the songs for the film Anastasia into Spanish and Catalan, and for the theatrical productions of Mamma Mia!, Les Misérables, and Victor/Victoria, produced by Stage Entertainment.

RICARD REGUANT is a pioneering director of musical theater in Spain, whose extensive career has been instrumental in the development of the genre nationwide. He has directed iconic productions such as Chicago, West Side Story, and Blood Brothers, and is the creator of musicals like When Harry Met Sally. Beyond the stage, he is an accomplished film and television director and the founder of the country’s first musical theater school. His recent work includes the musical Los titanes, which premiered at the Mérida International Classical Theatre Festival.

DANIEL SOTO holds a PhD in Translation and Interpreting from the Universidad de Málaga and the Université de Montréal, with his thesis titled Reception and Songs in the Translation of Musicals in Spain (2001-2021): A Descriptive and Functional Approach, which he defended in 2022.

In his thesis, he applies a descriptive-queer and functional-multimodal analysis model which updates the panorama of the reception of musicals in Spain and which also reinforces the hypothesis that musical translation is in most cases a form of translation-recreation.

He works as a translator-transcreator of web and audiovisual content, editing, marketing, board games and, mainly, video games, since 2014.

He has dedicated a part of his publications in journals or collective works to applied translation studies in song translation, the didactics of singable translation, and, mostly, the descriptive-functional analysis of the translation of musicals.

ALBA REGADERA MARTÍNEZ earned her degree in Translation and Interpreting and her Master’s in Editorial Translation from the University of Murcia, where she is currently a PhD candidate in the Arts and Humanities program. Her research specializes in the translation of songs from English-language films into Spanish and Italian dubbing. To complement her academic work, she has received specialized training in song adaptation for dubbing and musical theater through the Escuela de Doblaje de Canciones.

MARÍA OVELAR is the author of the lyrics for the original series David el Gnomo and La llamada de los Gnomos. She has adapted the Spanish version of the songs for numerous films and series for Disney, Fox, Warner, and other production companies, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, The Phantom of the Opera... She has also directed and sung in numerous productions such as LazyTown, Barbie, The Fox and the Hound 2...

She has been a member of the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar, Lovy, and El diluvio que viene. She has recorded jingles, background vocals for albums, movies, TV, festivals... Besides composing and adapting songs for numerous artists, she has also performed in country and rock bands. At present, she teaches song dubbing and musical adaptation at Escuela de Doblaje de Canciones.

SANDRA BRIZUELA has been working in dubbing translation and adaptation for more than 25 years. Her specialty is song and poem adaptation, and her new passion is Audio Description script creation. Lover of languages in general, writer, storyteller, scriptwriter, singer and astrologer, she defines herself as a “language artisan”. She has been training and guiding translators for more than 20 years from her position in Nonstop – today Media Access Company - as Translation and Adaptation Supervisor. Also, since 2020, she’s been defining creative guidelines for NatGeo and Star.​

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Amongst her favorite Works are the lyrics adaptations into Latam Spanish for Disney’s Doc McStuffins and Star Vs. the Forces of Evil; for Star’s Bob’s Burgers and Netflix’s The Archies and Dee and Friends in Oz. In 2020, she faced the big challenge of translating and adapting into English 30 María Elena Walsh’s classic songs for an audiovisual series for Petits Habitants. Lately, she has been mastering the art of Audio Description scriptwriting, creating AD scripts for different dubbing companies.

MARCELO KOTLIAR, ganador seis veces del premio Hugo, ha adaptado libro y letras para las producciones argentinas de Heathers, Come from Away, The Who's Tommy, Falsettos, Blood Brothers, Murder for Two, Hereafter, Murder Ballad, The Rocky Horror Show, Thrill Me, Bare, First Date, Into the Woods, Ghost, Shrek, Company, Mamma Mia!... y un largo etcétera.

ÁNGEL FERNÁNDEZ SEBASTIÁN is an audiovisual translator and song adaptor. He has translated the scripts of films such as American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, X-Men, Pearl Harbor, Mulan... He has also written the Spanish version of songs for films like Cinderella, A Goofy Movie, Winnie the Pooh, as well as for many television series (The Muppet Show, DuckTales...).

GUANCHI WANG is a PhD researcher in Translation and Transcultural Studies at the University of Warwick. He is also a content creator and amateur translator of musical numbers. Guanchi's PhD research project aims to explore the collaboration and interaction among different (human and non-human) agents in the amateur translation practice of musical (numbers) on social media. He is also interested in topics including popular music translation, translation and society, and translation and memory.

AARON COBOS is an actor, dancer, singer, choreographer and presenter with an extensive international career spanning Spain, the USA, Latin America and China. He began his professional journey in Hoy no me puedo levantar and has since starred in major productions including Aladdin, High School Musical, Mamma Mia!, My Fair Lady and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Following his tenure as the Artistic Director of Miss Universe Spain, he collaborated with Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz in Miami for Lorca in a Green Dress and performed in In the Heights in New York and Washington, D.C. At Antonio Banderas’ Teatro del Soho CaixaBank, his credits include A Chorus Line (2019) and Godspell (2022), directed by Emilio Aragón. In 2024, he portrayed Tulsa in Gypsy under Banderas’ direction, while also serving as assistant director and dance captain, and he also participated in the 2025 tour of Godspell. His recording credits include the Spanish cast albums of A Chorus Line and Godspell for Concord Theatricals Recordings. As a choreographer, he has worked on the feature film Ni contigo ni sin mí (directed by María Ruiz) and stage productions such as Érase una vez, Aladdin, and Hadas: El Musical. In 2025, his performance in Gypsy earned him the prestigious Talía Award for Best Actor in Musical Theatre and the BroadwayWorld Spain Award for Best Supporting Actor.

MARC GÓMEZ DOMÈNECH is a song adaptor for dubbing and musical theater. Among his most recent works are the Catalan adaptation of the songs from Disney's Wish, the Spanish version of The Producers recently premiered in Barcelona, and Legally Blonde, the latter in collaboration with Daniel Anglès.

He is also a dubbing actor and musical theater actor: he has performed the role of Zazu in Disney's production of The Lion King (Madrid) and is currently a member of the cast of The Producers.