DISBOOK - The Africa 2012 Edition - (Page 141)
Tr e n d s a n d b u si n e ss - Disbook AfricA 2012
A solution to Africa’s thorny problem of dubbing costs
As any distributor will tell you, one of the key challenges of distributing in Africa, including North Africa, is the mismatch between license fees paid by often stretched broadcasters and the cost of a quality dub. This discrepancy can mean that it is necessary to line up several sales in the same language area before the arithmetic works. But Europa dubbing Group believes it has the answer. Here, co-founder and General Manager Lila Lokmane tells Bob Jenkins what services her company offers, and how she and her team can achieve savings on dubbing of up to 50 percent.
Founded in Paris in 1999, Europa Dubbing Group now operates on a worldwide basis via affiliates on four continents, covering languages including French, from its studios in Paris, Belgium French from its studios in Brussels, English, Spanish and Portuguese via Europa Dubbing America, based in Miami, while their studios in Morocco offer services in dialectical Arabic, and through Jordanian partners, classical Arabic. They will also be shortly announcing new partnerships, allowing them to add German and Swahili to this impressive list. All the usual services in the areas of dubbing, voice-over, audio-description and subtitling are offered, and all with highly-respected voice artists operating state of the art equipment. But what is unusual about Europa Dubbing is the prices at which these services are available. Lila Lokmane, Europa’s CoFounder and General Manager, says, “ We work with our clients at rates that are around 50 percent lower than those of our competitors, which makes us the number one low-cost dubbing studio for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.” The obvious question is, how do they do it? Lokmane offers a number of explanations. “First of all,” she suggests, “we fully understand the economic imperatives of our clients who often come from developing countries where budgets for dubbing remain limited. In fact,” she goes on, “the first thing you have to understand about Africa is that the majority of distributors and TV stations fear the word “dubbing” because of its association with the need to pay high prices in order to achieve high quality. But, paradoxically, high quality is what everyone wants, and it is important for broadcasters to understand that the viewer needs to be able to follow the story of a series and understand its characters or they will lose interest. This level of interest and understanding is always best achieved in their own language.” But, understanding a problem is a long way from solving it, and Lokmane attributes Europa’s ability to cut this particular Gordian Knot “to the way we work.” “Firstly,” she explains, “all our equipment is state of the art digital equipment. We have been totally digital for six years now, creating great cost efficiencies, which we are happy to pass on to our clients. But it is also because we have put together a dedicated group of voice artists, with whom we work closely over a long period of time. This combination of state of the art equipment and a small, highly-skilled group of voice artists and translators, means we can dub very quickly—up to sixty episodes a month.” But she is also keen to stress the company’s attention to detail, as well as to budgets. “We have,” she insists, “some of the best translators available, well able to adapt to the many local dialects in the language concerned,” adding, “This is especially important in many Arab or African dialects as it helps to convey the same dynamic and thrust of the original meaning of the words.” If all of this sound like it might be a little bit too good to be true, Europa counts among its clients an impressive list of Africa’s content heavyweights, including, Cote Ouest, Zee TV, Outlook Entertainment and Shree International.
Europa dubbing co-founder and General Manager Lila Lokmane
141
http://www.europadubbing.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DISBOOK - The Africa 2012 Edition
Cover
Foreword - Welcome to Johannesburg!
Content
Conference Program
- English Version
- Version Française
Joburg Vibes
- Street Talks
- Drum Archive
- Made in Maboneng
- The Bioscope
- Faces
First Look
- Watercolors of love - Siri
- Mooz-Lum - Meet the Adebanjo’s
- Irrational Heart - Destiny River
- City of Men - Black hands
Trends & Business
- Made in Africa / Made for Africa
- The titans of laamb
- Inside «Inside Story»
- Ecology of african audiovisual content industry
- Gems from the namibian film collection
- The century of formats
- Great formats will come from Africa
- Partners wanted
- How many people (really) watch TV in Africa?
- Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?
- Africa’s digital switchover is coming - The question is when ?
- Intelsat’s epic
- China in Africa
- Zee : from a to z
- The Brazilians are coming !
- Against all odds
- Discover Discovery in Africa at Discop Africa
- Television with a purpose - A detailed look at educational television
- Branded Entertainment
- Hot docs-Blue ice, a unique opportunity for African documentary makers
- A solution to Africa’s thorny problem of dubbing costs
- Mission statement
Country report
- ALGERIA
- ANGOLA
- BENIN
- BOSTWANA
- BURKINA FASO
- BURUNDI
- CABO VERDE
- CAMEROON
- CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
- CHAD
- COMOROS
- DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
- DJIBOUTI
- EGYPT
- EQUATORIAL GUINEA
- ERITREA
- ETHIOPIA
- GABON
- GAMBIA
- GHANA
- GUINEA BISSAU
- GUINEA CONAKRY
- IVORY COAST / CÔTE D'IVOIRE
- KENYA
- LESOTHO
- LIBERIA
- LYBIA
- MADAGASCAR
- MALAWI
- MALI
- MAURITANIA
- MAURITIUS
- MOROCCO
- MOZAMBIQUE
- NAMIBIA
- NIGER
- NIGERIA
- REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
- RWANDA
- SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE
- SIERRA LEONE
- SENEGAL
- SEYCHELLES
- SOMALIA
- SOUTH AFRICA
- SOUTH SUDAN
- SUDAN
- SWAZILAND
- TANZANIA
- TOGO
- TUNISIA
- UGANDA
- ZAMBIA
- ZIMBABWE
Speakers
Participants
Index Advertisers
DISBOOK - The Africa 2012 Edition
http://www.nxtbook.fr/newpress/Discop-Africa-2012/Disbook_The_Africa_2012_Edition
http://www.nxtbook.fr/newpress/Discop-Africa-2012/Preview_Program_N2
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com