Committee urges Spanish government to help reduce dubbing

A committee of cultural industry experts has submitted a new document to the Spanish government to encourage the industry to reduce dubbing of films and increase subtitling.

According to the Department of Culture, 85% of the films that are released in Spain are dubbed. The business is worth $391m (300 million euros) yearly.

The committee suggested that the current system must change because: 1. Dubbing impacts the artistic integrity of films 2. The lack of knowledge of Spanish population of foreign languages (68% cannot speak other language than Spanish). 3. The impact on cultural diversity.

The Committe, then, strongly suggested: “to make a revolutionary social transformation that must count with the implication of the different administrations, the complicity of the sector directly affected and facing a long generation period to make it happen.”

The Committee is formed by personalities as Enrique González Macho [pictured], President of the Spanish Cinema Academy; Victoria Camps, well known philosopher; and Francisca Sauquillo, President of the Association of Consumers (CCU).

The document remarks the virtues of not imposing but promoting subtitles and proposes a number of initiatives that affect every sector. 1. TVs to offer the subtitles option by default in a period of two years. 2. A program of subtitled films in schools and high schools. 3. An advertising campaign promoting subtitles.

For theatrical releases, the document points the difficulty of the change in this sector and suggests: 1. Government to fund the digitisation of theaters. 2. To establish a growing share of titles that distributors must release with subtitles. 3. To oblige theaters to show in a growing number of sessions subtitled movies. 4. To demand by law that VoD and DVD movies have a subtitles option.