Satellite pay-TV provider StarSat has announced it is doubling down on dubbing foreign telenovelas into Zulu and other indigenous South African languages.
This comes after eMedia’s E-tv and Openview platforms saw success dubbing Turkish telenovelas into Afrikaans.
“Telenovelas continue dominating global television viewing, proving one of the most powerful entertainment genres in modern-day television and on-demand subscription viewing,” StarSat stated.
It said telenovelas are distinct from soap operas.
“Unlike soapies that go on seemingly forever, the running time of telenovelas averages around 120 episodes,” said StarSat.
“Whereas soapies can go on for decades, telenovelas usually run between six months and a year.”
Another key difference is that soap operas often appeal to women, whereas telenovelas are more family orientated, with some exceptions, StarSat said.
StarSat launched its Midrand dubbing studios in 2021 with the objective to adapt its best-performing telenovelas to Zulu and other indigenous South African languages.
“Our dubbing initiative continues to create many new jobs along the value chain,” said ODM CEO Debbie Wu.
On Digital Media (ODM) is the company that owned and operated TopTV. StarTimes bought it out of business rescue in 2013 and rebranded the service StarSat.
“Since the launch of our dubbing studios, we have recruited and trained numerous South African youth as voice actors, directors, translators, editors, and sound engineers,” Wu said.
Following the success of the Zulu-dubbed version Philippine novella “The Blood Sisters”, StarSat has launched a Zulu version of the popular Zee TV novella “Waaris: Indlalifa”.
A broad slate of Zulu dubbed telenovelas of Mexican, Korean, Spanish, and Indian origin are in the works for broadcast on StarSat’s flagship channel StarTimes RISE.
The pay-TV operator also has an app subscribers can use to watch its library of telenovelas.
StarSat also said it would broadcast English novellas, such as the Philippine show “La Vida Lena”, which will be on the ST Novella E Plus channel. It will also broadcast “My Left Side” — a Zee Novella.
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