The days when contents were industry-specific were for the history books to register. The present approach is to target every possible section of the audience, and perhaps things like universal ideals, inclusivity, and mass appeals are the talk of the town. In the same manner, you must have heard of a term called “Pan India”.
Big theatrical projects and even OTT series take care of reaching the maximum possible number of people. How do they do that?
By making the content available in as many languages as they possibly can. Usually, they go for Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi.
Sometimes, even in Marathi, Bengali, Bhojpuri and Punjabi, these are rare occasions.
What is most important in every exercise like this, is the fact that content should reach the audiences. Merely dubbing is never enough; they need to do good dubbing, which local people enjoy. Most importantly, it should not merely be a translation but a dubbing in the vigilance of a native speaker who can understand and input the nuances.
Take the case of the upcoming Disney+Hotstar series “The Mystery of Moksha Island”. It is a Telugu series and Disney+Hotstar will release the series in multiple languages. However, the dubbing is simply not up to the mark. After 4 days of the original Telugu trailer, we got the Hindi version, which is screaming for improvement.
People can always enjoy a film/series in original audio with subtitles. But, if the makers are spending money on dubbing, they better do it with grace and perfection. Because the current scenario of dubbing is not getting “The Mystery of Moksha Island” any significant audience from the Hindi market.
Let’s hope that we see some improvement.