Echoing the Candidates' Words -- In Spanish

His is the voice of presidents, but tomorrow night in Miami -- after much study and meditation, an energy bar, almonds and water without ice -- Vincente J. de la Vega will lend it to Barack Obama.

He will track the candidate's mood and mannerisms, chart any eruptions of emotion, channel any tempests of tone. For 90 minutes the Havana-born de la Vega will do his best to "become" the African American senator from Illinois. Whatever Obama says during the Democratic presidential candidates debate in Miami, de la Vega will say it for him -- in Spanish. Whenever Obama's lips move, a national television audience of Spanish speakers will hear de la Vega's supple baritone.

A team of interpreters working for de la Vega will perform the same service for the seven other Democratic presidential candidates participating in the historic forum tomorrow at 7 p.m. It is the first presidential candidates debate broadcast live in Spanish, on Univision, the highest-rated Spanish-language television network in the United States. It will take place at the University of Miami. Univision is not saying how many viewers it expects, but the network's nightly news program gets an audience of 1.5 million, according to Univision.

The voice of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will be done by a woman, of course.

The art and technology of simultaneous interpretation -- not translation, that's for printed words, not spoken ones -- is a central wrinkle of this candidates forum. It will go down in history as the pioneering debate in Spanish where . . . speaking Spanish is forbidden! More on that in a minute.

"You need to live that person, and act that person, when you are interpreting for them," de la Vega says by telephone from Miami, where he is the president and founder of Precision Translating Services.

The sound of those vocal cords is familiar to many. For Univision, de la Vega, 58, says he has rendered the pronouncements of every president since Ronald Reagan, plus countless celebrity guests on the network's variety shows.

"When [Attorney General] Alberto Gonzales resigned, I was Alberto Gonzales's voice," de la Vega says. "Then, about an hour and a half later, President Bush went on the air and talked about that topic, and I was President Bush's voice."

He assigned himself the role of Obama, because, he says, "I like him, I like his platform."

To prepare, he has been studying a DVD of Obama's public speaking and debate performances, absorbing characteristic vocabulary, verbal ticks, inflections. Interpreters for the other candidates, also working for de la Vega's company, have been doing the same. (Nobody needs to bone up on the Republican candidates yet. Only John McCain said yes to Univision's invitation for a GOP debate, so it's on hold.)

"Even though he at times is a fast speaker," de la Vega says of Obama, "his enunciation is impeccable, and that makes it easier for the interpreter."

Obama can actually muddle through a bit of Spanish. On the air recently, he serenaded popular Los Angeles radio DJ Eddie "El Piol?n" Sotelo with a few lines of a Mexican ballad.