Romania

[RO] Film Dubbing Draft Law Rejected

IRIS 2011-7:1/38

Eugen Cojocariu

Radio Romania International

On 7 June 2011 the Chamber of Deputies, the lower Chamber of Romania's Parliament, rejected a draft law for dubbing films instead of subtitling them, with five votes for the project, ten abstentions and 277 votes against the draft. The final decision will be taken by the upper chamber, the Senate

On 3 May 2011 an opposition member of the Chamber of Deputies had registered a draft law to modify the Legea Audiovizualului nr. 504/2002 in the sense of dubbing films instead of subtitling them, as it is happening now.

The initiator of the law, a well-known Romanian folk singer, argued that dubbing of foreign-language movies, instead of subtitling the works, would protect the national identity and would preserve the Romanian language, the quality of which would be threatened and altered by foreign words and expressions. He also stated dubbing would increase the accessibility of foreign-language movies to people with visual impairments or who cannot read, such as children and older people.

The draft proposal received a negative advisory opinion from the Legislative Council of Romania, which reproached that the draft was against European trends, statements of the European Commission (COM (2008) 566 final) and even resolutions of the European Council (2008/C 320/01) and European Parliament (2008/2225 (INI)). These institutions recommended to the member states encouraging multilingualism, subtitling and the circulation of European cinematographic works, to promote linguistic diversity and cultural dialogue, including by means of subtitling films, audiovisual works and television programmes, in order to facilitate learning and practising the EU languages and to better understand the cultural context of the respective audiovisual productions.

The draft law triggered instantly a huge amount of critical comments and debates, continued by an online petition and critical pages on a social network. The draft law was broadly (public, politicians, actors, directors, producers, communication specialists, teachers, TV people, writers, psychologists) criticised, arguing that the proposal would be beneficial only from an economic point of view for the dubbing firms, but would decrease the cultural quality of movies and would use Romanian actors for dubbing voices of foreign actors, instead of giving them time to prepare real parts in plays. The critics of the project also state that dubbing movies boosts isolation and intolerance and that Romania has to preserve its tradition of subtitling films, which had positive effects on foreign-language learning and practicing.