Dubbing in TV soap operas to continue

Dubbing in TV soap operas to continue

JAKARTA (JP): Private television networks will continue to screen Latin American and Chinese television soap operas dubbed into the Indonesian language, at least for the time being, Antara reported yesterday.

A meeting was held between executives of Indonesia's five private TV stations and government officials in mid-October, after the Indonesian film industry demanded that the soap operas not be dubbed into Indonesian.

The Latin American and Chinese TV soap operas, or "telenovelas", are becoming increasingly popular in Indonesia.

However, the October meeting failed to reach agreement on the issue, SCTV public relations chief Budi Darmawan said, as quoted by Antara.

"If the government decides that we should stop dubbing the telenovelas, then, sure, we'll comply," Budi said.

Local film executives argue that the danger of the intrusion of alien cultures into Indonesia is greater with the dubbing of these programs into the local language. They say the soap operas should be screened with Indonesian subtitles instead.

Budi noted that dubbing is widely practiced in other countries. "In Thailand, almost every film is dubbed. They are so good at it that they sometimes dub programs live to air," he added.

He said that viewers are able to understand dubbed soap operas more easily than if subtitles were used. He added that the practice of dubbing the serials had led to a mushrooming of production houses. "Clearly this is creating new job opportunities and encouraging productivity in the production houses," he said.

President of the Indosiar TV network, Anky Handoko, said earlier that his station would stop airing dubbed foreign programs if the government says so.

Indosiar will not have any problem at all if dubbing into Indonesian is forbidden, because the Mandarin programs that it airs have already been dubbed into English, he said.

"So it would only be a matter of adding subtitles to our programs," he added. (emb)