Does the quality suffer?

Senior dubbing artist from Mumbai, Pushpa Saksena feels the quality of dubbing depend upon the budget allocated to an extent. She says low budgets affect the vendor's capability to hire quality professionals.

"When the budget prevents dubbing vendors from having quality dubbing artists, they compromise for average artists who will naturally charge less. So the quality will be missing," she says.

""Ususally the budgets are low. The client knows that vendors work at any cost. But finally, it's the client who is using the final product which may not be up to the mark. He accepts it because he has no knowledge of what a good dub is all about. All he cares is that he is getting it in his budget and people are watching it," says Lewis.

"I don't think that the issue of doing inferior quality to save cost is correct at all," defends UTV's Ghosh. "In fact we have the highest of quality checks both at the client level as well as at internal levels to ensure that we deliver top quality work. Our clients; who are mostly international have international benchmarks which we need to adhere to."

Pradeep Hejmadi

Broadcasters, while denying this trend, insist that the dubbing quality is ensured through expert quality checks. "We have quality control in place. Apart from voice, this takes care of expression and mixing," says Nick India director business & operations Pradeep Hejmadi.

Pushpa Saksena, who puts Disney on a high pedestal as the most quality conscious channel, speaks about the need for a standard rate card for dubbing artists. She says the Mumbai-based Association of Voice Artists (AVA) is currently looking at launching such a system.

UTV studio: another view

Dubbing organisations having in-house studio facility normally keeps sound recordists and script writers in their pay rolls. Dubbing artists are available in the market on freelance basis. The present payment structure for dubbing artists depends upon seniority and expertise. It starts at Rs. 200 and ends in the region of Rs. 2000 for a half-an-hour episode.

Bhatt says the pay was better earlier. "In 1993 my seniors used to earn Rs. 3500 for a 30 minutes assignment. We are doing the same work for a lesser amount now," he says.

Dubbing as a career

Celebrity dubbing, who is common in the international arena, is making its presence felt in India now. Mainframe had Shahrukh Khan dubbing for Disney's The Incredibles recently. Salman Khan was supposed to dub Hanuman for an animation movie, but later the assignment fell on Mukesh Khanna.

Leela Ghosh agrees that it is tough to get good dubbing artists. She says, though there is a lack of good training institutes, dubbing as a career is opening up.

"Dubbing aspirants will have to learn on the job since there are not many training institutes around. We do encourage people who approach us. People aspiring to be actors also turn to this field," she says.

UTV keeps having auditions for different types of voice. "We add the suitable ones to our talent bank," says Indranil Ghosh.

Dubbing is pursued as a part-time career as well. 23-year old Saumya Daan, who has Spiderman and Archies to his credit, works as a customer service assistant with Jet Airways. "The working schedule in dubbing is really flexible. So I am able to devote my spare time to dubbing," he says.

Saksena points out the lack of pure Hindi speaking voice over. "While I was in UTV, we actually moved dubbing to Delhi in search of pure Hindi speaking people."

He also stresses on the need for scriptwriters who knows how to employ the local lingo as and when the context demands it. "Most of the time people used to just translate. Now there is demand for transcreation."

The road ahead

D'costa finds the future of language dubbing in India unpredictable. "People might get fed up of dubbed programmes. Anything can happen."

Ghosh feels foreign content will be the key for the industry's survival. "Opporunity lies in foreign content. More work will come from production houses abroad or broadcasting companies abroad."

Saksena is upbeat. He feels that with India having low English literacy levels, foreign channels have to localise their content and do a lot of language dubbing. "International players will have to rely on language dubbing for better market penetration. So the industry is here to stay."

Again the question of consolidation comes into focus. The easy availability of service helps the clients to dominate the bargaining. Thus, the rates go haywire in spite of the heavy workload. This diminishes the financial status of a growing market. In the long run, this might lead to the formation of an unsophisticated and fragile industry. Buying out the smaller players will be one practical solution before the established players to avoid any such complications.