Region: Slovak TV must dub fairy tales in Czech

Popular fairy tales or cartoons with Czech dialogue, which are also popular among Slovak children, will not receive a pre-holiday reprieve from Slovakia's strict language law despite the mutual intelligibility of both languages.

Changes proposed by Deputy Ondrej Dostál, chairman of the Civic Conservative Party (OKS), to the strict language law, would have granted an exception for Czech fairy tales made for children under the age of 12 from having to be dubbed into Slovak. The exemption was, however, rejected in Parliament Dec. 9.

"I perceive this disapproval as an inability of the current government to step out of the shadow of [previous Prime Minister Robert] Fico's nationalist government," Dostál told The Prague Post. "Frankly, I do not understand it. In my opinion, it contradicts common sense, because even small children in Slovakia understand Czech."

The Slovak-language law aims to keep Slovak as the only language allowed for conducting public business. It has in particular angered the country's significant Hungarian minority, which is heavily concentrated in the south of the country. The law also regulates how language can be used on television.

One paragraph of the law reads, "Foreign-language audiovisual works intended for children under 12 years must be dubbed into the official language." This is the clause that Dostál sought to change. It has caused trouble for the state-owned Slovak TV (STV) in 2006, when it was fined 20,000 Slovak crowns for broadcasting episodes of the Czech children's classic Spejbl a Hurvínek in Czech.

The restrictions do allow Czech films and television shows to be broadcast in their original language, but require everything targeting children under 12 be dubbed into Slovak. According to Dostál, the usual way of circumventing this formula is "labeling the film as for children older than 12" or "family film," which is a trend he expects to continue.

STV spokesman Peter Susko confirmed that Czech films are regularly aired in their original versions. However, the trend is to dub children's fairy tales (Večerníček) if they are obviously intended for children younger than 12 - for example, as is done with the popular cartoon Bob a Bobek.

"We do not circumvent the obligation to dub movies," Susko said. "We do comply with the dubbing obligations in films where dubbing is compulsory."

Despite the rejection of Dostál's proposal, his other propositions concerning moderation of the fines for not obeying this law were partly approved.

The Parliament approved a 50 percent reduction of sanctions for failing to use the national language. Formerly, they ranged from between 100 and 5,000 euros. Also, the language dictating that fines "must be" imposed was changed to read "may be" imposed.

Dostál was proposing a complete nullification of the system of sanctions for using alternative foreign languages, which he calls "nonsense."

Klára Jiřičná can be reached at
kjiricna@praguepost.com