Voice-over Internships In India On The Rise

Excerpt from the The Hindustan Times:

"Internships are part of our add-on courses like journalism. Students of other short-term courses like advertising and banking also visit advertising agencies and banks to see people in action," said Meera Ramchandran, principal, Gargi College.

"The students may or may not get stipend for these internships but they do get experience in these organisation," she said. "Most of our students do summer jobs such as voice-overs and editing.

And I think that is primarily so because ....

Indian teen agers are becoming trendy and there is an eagerness to earn a quick buck or add some experience under their belt. And they are getting attracted towards different kind of summer jobs like voice-overs.

And hence Delhi University has launched an initiative to help students gain hands on experience called "add-on courses".

That is also so because Clients also insist on need for high dubbing quality. Joy Bhattacharya, senior VP (Programming) of National Geographic Channel, says, "We insist on 100% factual and language accuracy in all our programmes. Our in-house teams supervise and guide dubbing vendor constantly."

And there are no formal institutes that can teach dubbing as of now. According to Leela Roy Ghosh of Sound & Vision, which dubs a number of Hollywood movies into Hindi and other regional languages, "Dubbing, like music, is an art, which has to be nurtured. Since there are no training institutes, most people tend to learn on the job and they have to learn fast, as there's little or no room for mistakes.

Nearly everyone in India is dubbing, from house-wives to teachers to doctors, who dub voice-overs at recording studios after work.

Rahul Bhatia, GM, UTV, who heads the company's dubbing division, says, "The voice-over business in India, estimated at Rs 15 crore, is growing steadily at 10-15%. There is therefore a constant demand for fresh voices."