The Business of Subtitles

[domino harvey]

I watch everything with subtitles, and when I was a kid I watched TV with Closed Captions. I have no trouble focusing or not focusing as I so desire. The problems zedz describes are completely alien to me

[Gregory]

Sometimes I think you two are just trying to be the opposite of each other!

[zedz]

Well, now I know why we see films in completely different ways!

Maybe the handful of films we both like either don't have HoH subtitles or are in languages neither of us understand!

[kidc85]

I watch everything with subtitles, and when I was a kid I watched TV with Closed Captions. I have no trouble focusing or not focusing as I so desire. The problems zedz describes are completely alien to me

Ditto. My girlfriend insists on having subtitles on, regardless of language, and I just don't notice it anymore. To the point where, as our player remembers the last setting, I will accidentally watch English language films with the subtitles on, even when I'm by myself, just because I don't 'see' them anymore.

I just wanted to make sure that I properly understood all of the issues as, obviously, I have needed to completely be at peace with 'fixed' subtitles for years now. I appreciate everyone's comments and agree with practically everything, keep fighting the good fight.

[Zot!]

I watch everything with subtitles, and when I was a kid I watched TV with Closed Captions. I have no trouble focusing or not focusing as I so desire. The problems zedz describes are completely alien to me

Ditto. My girlfriend insists on having subtitles on, regardless of language, and I just don't notice it anymore. To the point where, as our player remembers the last setting, I will accidentally watch English language films with the subtitles on, even when I'm by myself, just because I don't 'see' them anymore.

I just wanted to make sure that I properly understood all of the issues as, obviously, I have needed to completely be at peace with 'fixed' subtitles for years now. I appreciate everyone's comments and agree with practically everything, keep fighting the good fight.

Is this because you guys are hard of hearing or some kind of obsessive compulsive thing?

[TMDaines]

I always have English subtitles on (for English-language films) when watching with my missus, as she isn't a native English speaker.

[jindianajonz]

My girlfriend does the same thing. She feels that if there's a single word she doesn't understand, it is probably the most important word in the plot, and demands that we rewind and rewatch until she understands what was said. When we started watching The Wire, she demanded subtitles because she couldn't understand the what a lot of the drug dealers were saying, until I pointed out to her that even with subtitles on she didn't really understand their slang.

I'm at the point where it still drives me crazy, though. I find that when subtitles are on for english movies, I pick up on the key words in the sentence but have a much harder time fitting those words together in a comprehensible way. For instance, if somebody says "I'm going to the store to buy a horse horse" I'll know that something was said about a store and a horse, but often miss out on how those words connect to eachother. Is he going to the store on a horse? Is he going to store his horse somewhere? I never have this problem with foreign films, but having english sound and english subs is like trying to listen to two people talk at once.

[MichaelB]

I always have English subtitles on (for English-language films) when watching with my missus, as she isn't a native English speaker.

And for similar reasons I appreciate having subtitles in the spoken language of the film, although in most cases I have to buy them from the country in question and hope they throw in English as well.

In fact, in the case of Ridicule I deliberately favoured the French edition over the English one as I couldn't find a single release with both French and English subtitles (there may have been one since 2000, I don't know), and I thought the French would be more useful given that with this particular film a transcription of its carefully crafted puns is far more valuable to me than a translation that can only ever be approximate.

[Zot!]

having english sound and english subs is like trying to listen to two people talk at once.

Yeah, that's how I process it. And My second language sound + English subs = "No, that wasn't translated right!" Either way, huge distraction. I did once watch Von Trier's Danish language The Idiots in Munich with German subs. I speak neither, but I still somehow followed along.

[zedz]

The only time I managed to see Murotava's The Sentimental Cop, it was in Russian (which I understand a little) with Italian subtitles (which I understand a little more). Fortunately, that film is all about cognitive dissonance, and every line of dialogue is repeated half a dozen times!

Oh, and I guess I ought to buy my wife some flowers on the way home. You poor guys.

[Michael Kerpan]

We first watched ZHANG Yibai's Long Night in Shanghai (mostly half and half, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese) with NO subtitles at all. Since the film is about communicating (or trying to) when one doesn't share a mutual language, the lack of subtitles seemed appropriate somehow.

[TMDaines]

I always have English subtitles on (for English-language films) when watching with my missus, as she isn't a native English speaker.

And for similar reasons I appreciate having subtitles in the spoken language of the film, although in most cases I have to buy them from the country in question and hope they throw in English as well.

I guess, whether this is possible or not, depends upon which areas of cinema you're interested in. French and Italian, sure, as they frequently provide same language subtitles. The Germans seem to hate their deaf and hard-of-hearing community as they hardly ever provide them for some reason.

[GaryC]

I suspect I'm more of an auditory person - I once scored very well on an auditory comprehension test. (Two people read increasingly complex sentences to each other, and the listener has to repeat the sentence word for word from memory. I managed it very easily, but the other person couldn't do it with even the simplest sentences.) On the other hand, I'm crap at the picture round in my local pub quiz.

There's another factor with me: I'm used to watching films and TV with subtitles, even English HOH subtitles, as my mother has lifelong deafness. So when I was living at home or when I visit, TV programmes always have had HOH subtitles on when she's watching. In my DVD and Blu reviews, I always note if HOH subtitles are absent, as I suspect I'm more sensitive to that issue than many people. And with review discs I have subtitles on, to note any issues with them in my review. (For example, a misspelling on one of the BFI's BBC Ghost Stories DVDs - "black shark" for the creature of East Anglian folklore the Black Shuck.)

As for foreign-language films, I don't tend to watch films over and over, though many favourites I have watched many times in my 48 years of existence. I'm more conscious of the films I haven't yet seen, and as a regular reviewer, the review discs have to take priority too. The only language I was fluent enough to be able to hold a conversation in (and to watch a film via French subtitles - that was a print of Gertrud at the NFT, by the way) was French, though I have a smattering of tourist German and Polish, and thanks to a trip to China in 2009 a few words of Mandarin. I suppose I could try to watch a French-language film without subs, though my French is very rusty nowadays.

I don't know what the feeling would be for films that have played with subtitles in their country of origin - such as, in the UK, the Latin-language Sebastiane, Welsh- and Gaelic-language features, Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen (opening reel in cinemas, all the way through on two BBC2 broadcasts due to very heavy Scots accents). Or something like Carlos, which must be the most polyglot film I've seen in recent years, with something like five main languages (French, English, German,Spanish, Arabic) and at least five others spoken in particular scenes. If there is anyone who would not need subtitles for any of that, I would be very impressed! (The Optimum/StudioCanal DVD of Carlos has fixed subtitles for non-English-language dialogue.)

[MichaelB]

The Germans seem to hate their deaf and hard-of-hearing community as they hardly ever provide them for some reason.

The Czechs are more likely to provide subtitles in Czech than English these days, sadly, especially on back-catalogue stuff. Although that's better than nothing at all - I do at least have a modicum of the language (I had formal lessons for over a year about fifteen years ago, and still retain enough to get the gist, although Bohumil Hrabal adaptations are well beyond my comprehension).

[colinr0380]

I know that this probably isn't a big deal for most people, given that apparently nobody else listens to commentary tracks (and commentaries themselves seem to be becoming an endangered species) but the other issue that I would add to this subtitle debate is that I often watch commentaries with the subtitles from the original film running alongside so that I can 'watch/read' the bottom layer of filmic action while 'listening' to the top layer of extra spoken information (what can I say - I like to multitask!) In those situations it really doesn't matter if a film is in a foreign language or English - the DVD era and commentary tracks have made even Hard of Hearing subtitles indispensable to me and, to get back to the original subject, the removability of subtitles has allowed me to set up an audio-visual experience like that in a way which best suits my personal tastes.

(I also often get irritated by those discs that have removable subtitles but force you to go back to the menu screen and choose to turn them on or off there rather than just being able to toggle them with a button on the remote - that makes setting everything up the way I like unnecessarily fiddly!)

[vsski]

Why is it that AE's new found practice of non-removable subtitles has elicited a storm of negative reaction (and imo rightly so), that even led to a separate thread on this forum, yet Olive who does the same thing for all of their non-English titles (at least as far I'm aware of) receives a lot of praise (granted for some of their Republic catalogue titles) and other than mentioning the subtitle issue hasn't caused the same kind of adverse reaction. At least to AE's credit they do publish some decent supplements in many cases while Olive's discs are mostly bare bones.
And for the record, I despise this tactic of non-removable subtitles (unless specifically desired by the filmmaker) and because of it have not bought any AE or Olive titles that have them.
I'm just curious about the difference in reaction - unless I have read the Olive responses incorrectly, but the emotional reaction seems different.

[domino harvey]

Why is it that AE's new found practice of non-removable subtitles has elicited a storm of negative reaction

Because people need something to complain about. I agree, non-fixed subs are always preferable, but the concept of removable subs for a non-english film's home media release is a new one and not always going to happen thanks to rights, availability of print, &c. If you hate it so much that you don't want to buy the product, fine, that's your right as a consumer, but don't act like this is the same thing as the wrong aspect ratio or whatever. The sheer volume of A/V-related bitching and moaning that's filled the internet in the last five years or so is enough to make one give up reading these sorts of topics all together

[TMDaines]

I imagine that the reason why Olive and AE have received a different level of reaction is because AE deal with more foreign titles. In addition it seems to be an issue that affects more of the Brits and Europeans here.The only foreign language Olive I own is 1900, where the subtitles are optional, and they don't really release too much non-English language stuff that I want. Unlike Domino seems to think, like most people, I'll tend to shout loudest about something that I'm strongly against, when it impacts me directly, as I did when Olive announced 1900 and I commented several times that they needed to provide optional subtitles.

Why is it that AE's new found practice of non-removable subtitles has elicited a storm of negative reaction

Because people need something to complain about. I agree, non-fixed subs are always preferable, but the concept of removable subs for a non-english film's home media release is a new one and not always going to happen thanks to rights, availability of print, &c. If you hate it so much that you don't want to buy the product, fine, that's your right as a consumer, but don't act like this is the same thing as the wrong aspect ratio or whatever. The sheer volume of A/V-related bitching and moaning that's filled the internet in the last five years or so is enough to make one give up reading these sorts of topics all together

What on earth are you talking about? It's a concept that has been around since the advent of DVD pretty much. Quite clearly, it's not important to you, but don't act like a selfish prat and not acknowledge the very valid reasons that it is a practice that can completely ruin a film watching experience for a great deal of people. Subtitles, to help render a film intelligible for a foreign audience, are not usually part of the original image; they are simply an aid to help interpret foreign-language dialogue for a viewer. In that regard, they can blemish a film in the same way that a non-OAR projection can, in the sense their presence can spoil the artist(s)'s vision. I'm pretty sure you would get up in arms if people started adding forced English language subtitles to English language films to combat importing and exporting - that's exactly the frustration many of us polyglots experience. I don't know about in America, but in Europe, the majority of people speak more than one language. Britain is actually an exception in this regard. The idea that the people in every nation speak one language and one language only is more than little out of date.

If you're going to make posts like this, then please, don't worry about no longer reading threads like these. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[vsski]

Domino, I don't disagree with you about more complaints on the web surrounding A/V and aspect ratio issues, yet my point was not astonishment over the negative reaction to non-removable subs per se - although I'm clearly one of the people who complains about it - but the difference in attitude to Olive who has the same practice. I simply can't understand why AE gets so much hatemail and Olive doesn't on this issue even though both have the same practice - and TMDaines may be correct geography may have something to do with it, however, on this thread I don't think we have the average representative of either continent.

And yes, TMDaines, you are correct 1900 does have removable subs, I realized after writing my post that I forgot about that one, although here the reason I believe is that it is offered in multiple languages including an English dub, and that is the reason subs are removable, so I see this as the exception to the Olive rule.

[domino harvey]

Quite clearly, it's not important to you, but don't act like a selfish prat

If you're going to make posts like this, then please, don't worry about no longer reading threads like these. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I wasn't addressing you, so I don't know why you took this so personal, but clearly you already have a problem with me and have resorted to more name-calling. But that's cool

[RobertB]

Why is it that AE's new found practice of non-removable subtitles has elicited a storm of negative reaction (and imo rightly so), that even led to a separate thread on this forum, yet Olive who does the same thing for all of their non-English titles (at least as far I'm aware of) receives a lot of praise (granted for some of their Republic catalogue titles) and other than mentioning the subtitle issue hasn't caused the same kind of adverse reaction. At least to AE's credit they do publish some decent supplements in many cases while Olive's discs are mostly bare bones.
And for the record, I despise this tactic of non-removable subtitles (unless specifically desired by the filmmaker) and because of it have not bought any AE or Olive titles that have them.
I'm just curious about the difference in reaction - unless I have read the Olive responses incorrectly, but the emotional reaction seems different.

I don't know if Olive's four Bo Widerberg releases will be on DVD or BR, but if its blu ray and they don't make the subs optional I'm willing to complain a lot! Svensk Filmindustri have been bad at releasing Swedish films on blu ray, so Criterion-imports have been the way to get Bergman and Sjöström on blu. I am hoping that Olive will give me a way of getting some Widerberg films in a better quality than the national releases.

Film is international. Forced subs are an awful let-down to many film fans around the world.

[TMDaines]

Quite clearly, it's not important to you, but don't act like a selfish prat

If you're going to make posts like this, then please, don't worry about no longer reading threads like these. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I wasn't addressing you, so I don't know why you took this so personal, but clearly you already have a problem with me and have resorted to more name-calling. But that's cool

I don't have a problem with you personally, as I would hardly know you from Adam. I have had a problem with a number of things that you have said and I would have commented against whoever said those things. What's the point in trolling people who are debating issues you simply don't care about, whether here or previously in the TT thread? You say you're not interested, you say you're not going to post, and yet you still do, mocking those who do at least have something to say. Please don't if you have nothing to add. What was the point shitting on Lubitsch the other week and being incredibly insulting to him, simply because you disagreed with him, when clearly he's passionate and deeply cares about film preservation, even attempting to contribute in his own way? Let's not start getting all defensive now and attempt to draw sympathy to yourself, after attempting to pour scorn on people who perhaps care about a certain aspect of DVD publishing that doesn't particularly concern you.

In the past I've had crossed words with a couple of people on the forum, yet have had constructive conversations and relationships with him afterwards, so you're mistaken if you think I go around scowling at your avatar.

[domino harvey]

When have I ever resorted to name calling with you? Answer: Never. When have you? Answer: Enough times to be warned about it by a Mod-- not that stopped you today. Don't claim I am being uncivil in my discourse by ignoring the fact that between the two of us, you're the one lobbing childish insults. I am asking you to please stop it.

Believe it or not, I am allowed to hold an opinion you don't share, and so long as I don't single anyone out for personal attacks or behave in a sexist, racist, or similarly discriminatory manner, I can post about it. If you'll look at the post that set you off, I stated that I'm all in favor of non-fixed subs. I also alluded to the fact that VHS releases rarely had such luxury, so this is something that's only come into play post-DVDs. It's an entitlement issue as far as I'm concerned. You disagree? Very well. See how easy that is?

People are complaining about Artificial Eye and not Olive because that's where the gang-up is happening right now, seeing as how the Olive issue has already come and gone and most have accepted that's how it is and will be. I am allowed to be frustrated that all the posts about Artificial Eye lately seem to be about fixed subs, an issue which affects a very small portion of the viewing audience, even here. I never said everyone had to agree with me and I never threatened to burn any bridges behind me. Am I frustrated that seemingly every thread devolves into A/V issues? Of course. Am I allowed to express my frustration in a way which does not hinder another's ability to voice their opposition to my position? Yes. Now for God's sake leave me alone

[TMDaines]

When have I ever resorted to name calling with you? Answer: Never. When have you? Answer: Enough times to be warned about it by a Mod-- not that stopped you today. Don't claim I am being uncivil in my discourse by ignoring the fact that between the two of us, you're the one lobbing childish insults. I am asking you to please stop it.

Yes. Now for God's sake leave me alone

Oh, come on. If you're big enough to dish it out to others, you're big enough to take it. Let's not have crocodile tears. Don't start pretending that you're holier than me: we both know there's plenty of name calling from you to be drudged up, i.e. re: Lubitsch.

There's one instance where I've called you a name. Don't be surprised if after posting:

WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES WHO CARES
Besides you?

when a few people are having a conversation, that someone calls you a "whiny bitch". Really, do you think I was unprovoked and you were stunned at that? Would you do that in real life in a discussion? And then be flummoxed if or when the person you were irritating said something?

Today I simply suggested that you put your point across without implictly suggesting that people who demand optional subtitles have an entitlement complex, thus ignoring all the logical and sound arguments that we have made in the past, and thus acting in the manner of a selfish idiot, who'll neither take the time to appreciate why it impacts others and simply downplay it, for it is something that doesn't concern him.

You can do the whole entitlement spiel about anything. I can make that just as well for OAR, which you suggested bore no comparison, as VHS and DVD until very recently was littered with the American market being subjected to "fullscreen" releases. Were people rallying against them being "entitled"? Are the deaf and HOH community "entitled" for requesting subtitles to aid their ability to digest a film? Probably, after all the glorious VHS didn't have them all too frequently! Let's not bother with extras either. It would be nice to think that in 2013 things have moved on a bit from the 1970s, and that those people who expect that aren't labelled, insultingly, as entitled.

[manicsounds]

I'm watching the bonus features of "The Raid 2", the US Sony disc, and there is a subtitle issue that I don't understand.

On the making-of featurette, there are optional English subtitles available. The featurette is a mix of English, Indonesian, and Japanese. When you turn on the subtitles, it subtitles everything, including the English interviews. There is no other subtitle option.

I've seen this on a few other titles (Miles Davis Live At Montreaux from Eagle Rock also had this), I don't understand why they decide to do this, just give 2 subtitle streams, one for subtitles for all the dialogue, and one for just the non-English.