Group protests govt plan to ban dubbing
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)