Sad news in the dubbing industry hit the start of the year 2015. Mr Francis Lam Pou-chuen, well-known as the voice actor of Doraemon, the blue cat robot, passed away and sparked discussions about the practitioners.

Regardless what the results were, it is inevitable that the area’s golden age had gone and scattered people have to come together to strike for lost benefits.

According to Ms May Tse Yuet-mei, a veteran Cantonese voice actor who had worked for many characters, the salary of dubbing was relatively much higher than now.

She says she could earn up to $6,000 every month when the television industry just began and $5,000 could in fact be the first installment of an apartment in about four decades ago.

May recalls when she first worked with Television Broadcast (TVB) and everyone included in any shows would be given a basic salary. And then the lines she had said, the more money would get. She could earn like $280 for each show back then. Though the famous artists could earn up to $450, May could take up to five shows a day.

She also says dubbed programmes were the main dishes for starting TV stations since they were not able to film many productions and with the lack of people, so “we were important.”

The wages had dropped drastically over time. May says it dived to averagely around $120 per show recently.

TVB, as the biggest TV station in town, got its own dubbing team. Ms Dido Ma Xiangru is one of the members in the Putonghua team.

She says she is now earning $11,000 a month, which is not a good sum of money to live in Hong Kong, and has to perform in 1,200 shows per year.

She also says that the best voice actors can be paid up to $800 a show and they may even get more jobs than her.

To life a more satisfied life in here, the mainland dubber teaches Putonghua and does translations to grab a bit more petty cash. She emphasised that she and her colleagues are forbidden to do any other dubbing-related jobs, according to the company’s policy.