Group protests govt plan to ban dubbing

JAKARTA (JP): A group of dubbers staged a protest at the House of Representatives yesterday over the government's plan to ban dubbing in imported films screened on television.

The spokesman of the group claiming to represent 1,000 professional dubbers across the city, Dadang Ridman, said the government could instead seek improvement of dubbing methods or apply the ban selectively.

"We've been making our living from this profession and we have tried to improve ourselves. We don't know where to go if the government enacts the ban," he told Tjokong Tarigan and Zumarnis Zein of the Armed Forces faction who received the group.

Dadang said the ban, if passed, would cost the jobs of many people whose professions were related to dubbing, including translators.

He said a dubber for a main character earned between Rp 250,000 and Rp 300,000 (between US$88 and $105) per film and Rp 55,000 per episode of a series.

Some 50 people joined the rally, the second after one was held earlier this month. They did not yell or beat drums but peacefully unfurled banners carrying the message of their complaints on the House foyer.

The demonstration was staged just four days before the second deliberation of the broadcasting bill kicks off next Monday.

The House endorsed the bill last December after nine months of deliberation, but President Soeharto refused to enact it due to some problematic articles.

Minister of Information R. Hartono has said the House and the government were expected to amend articles on television's span of coverage, on dubbing and on the term of license for private TV stations.

Hartono said the dubbing of non-English speaking films into Indonesian would be banned on grounds that they did not comply with national culture. He said the government would instead require dubbing in English or subtitles in Indonesian.

Following Hartono's statement last month, dubbers stopped working in fear that their films would not be screened, according to Dadang.

Minister of Education and Culture Wardiman Djojonegoro announced in 1996 that all imported films shown on TV should be dubbed into Indonesian.

Dadang insisted that dubbing did not harm national culture, because editing had to be done first before dubbed films are aired.

"(Rather than harming national culture) we help the government filter out any side effects of foreign culture. Our job is to transform films into Indonesia --like ones which use Indonesian idioms so that they are easily understood," Dadang said.

He criticized the government plan to allow only English for film dubbing, saying that it would take dubbers many years to get used to the new medium.

Another dubber, Irene Nasution, who provides the voice for Clara in a famous Latin-American soap opera, Si Cantik Clara (Beautiful Clara), said if the ban was enacted, the government would violate the 1945 Constitution which says all citizens have the right to be employed.

The House has formed a 21-member team to deliberate the bill's amendments and is expected to pass the modified bill on Sept. 12. (amd)