Meri awaaz suno

Manish Dutt of Visual Reality, a dubbing studio which primarily dubs English films in regional languages says, “The dubbing industry is booming. With the satellite business growing, and more and more foreign language films being released here, this was bound to happen. Four to five years ago, English films were being released in their original version and that obviously didn’t find too many takers. But now with the dubbed versions available, these films have a huge market, especially in the northern and southern parts of the country. As of now, the films are being dubbed in Hindi and Tamil. But we plan to dub in all languages in the future.”

There is another area where dubbing studios are raking in the moolah. They make VCDs of the foreign films which were not distributed in India.

“There is no dearth of dubbing artistes as wannabe actors and theatre artists are always willing to do this work. It is a high paying job. Dubbing artistes make about Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000 per character in a feature film, which takes them about 10 to 15 days to complete,” says Dutt.

But it seems the money isn’t trickling down to the dubbing artistes. Meena Goculdas, journalist turned dubbing artiste says,

“It is one of the most interesting professions. The other day I was dubbing for Julia Roberts in ‘Pretty Woman’ for a video. One moment you are dubbing for Sridevi and another moment for a parrot. Everyday is a new day. But the pay isn’t much. There is so much undercutting happening that dubbing artistes end up getting almost nothing in hand. I am getting less than what I used to.”

“That’s true” reiterates Ami Trivedi, who plays the title role in ‘Kituu-Sab Janti Hai’, “Money in this profession is getting lesser and lesser. The only compensation is that there is no dearth of work.” Apart from other characters, Ami has dubbed for Harry Potter in ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.’

Engineer turned dubbing artiste, Vinod Kulkarni has a solution: “It is true that dubbing for animation and documentaries are not really profitable as vendors make much more money than the dubbing artistes, but the best option is to dub for commercials, where the money is still good. You can do as much work as you want and with flexible timings,” says Kulkarni, who has dubbed for over 1000 commercials till date including the famous ‘Machcharon ka Yamraj’.