GLOBAL STORIES, LOCAL AUDIENCES: Dubbing Netflix in India

This chapter discusses Netflix’s investments in dubbing as a strategy to expand viewership for its originally produced content, focusing specifically on India both as a source of and recipient for dubbed content. The production of dubbed media content, however, involves much more than translating dialogues from one language to another. Examining how a media text is dubbed offers insights into the gatekeeping and evaluative logics that govern the translation and circulation of global media texts. These logics are crucially tied up with questions of the audience. What happens if media producers are unable to imagine or ascertain who the audiences are for their productions? Based on fieldwork in a dubbing studio in Mumbai, including firsthand participation in translating and adapting the Hindi language scripts of a Netflix original series into English, this chapter examines the challenges and dilemmas that emerge from trying to translate media content when the target audience is unknown and details the choices and decisions made by dubbing professionals despite this uncertainty. Examining the dubbing process illustrates how audience imaginaries are central to the translation and adaptation process of media texts.