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Subtitling dialects | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 9 of 39 06 September 2012 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I see foreign speakers of English who have thick accents are occasionally subtitled, but hardly ever do I see it for regional varieties of English. Even dialects which can sometimes be difficult to understand, like a thick Scottish or Jamaican accent, are left up to the listener to decipher.
Like Ogrim, I've watched French Canadian TV shows with subtitles. And the subtitles weren't even a literal transcription of what the actors were saying — about half the subtitled sentences were reworded. Sometimes it was just for conciseness, but most of it was to remove Canadianisms and make it more like the French from France. In particular it was really interesting to see how wide the gulf is between Canadian and French slang. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4639 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 10 of 39 06 September 2012 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is because over the last 20-30 years, using your dialect has been strongly encouraged in Norway. You have newsreaders and TV and radio presenters talking in dialect. True, there are some dialects that can be hard to understand in other parts of the country, but as a general rule it is politically incorrect to admit that one version of Norwegian is somehow better than another. I am talking about spoken Norwegian, in writing you do of course chose between one of the two written standards of the language. A Swedish or Danish TV show is normally subtitled, although they might not be more difficult to understand than certain Norwegian dialects (I say that from the point of view of someone who speaks pretty standard Norwegian). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 39 06 September 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have made a point of learning Scots and Platt as languages (which some claim they are), and I have tried my hand at writing in Southern Jutish a few times. But apart from that I don't spend much time and effort on learning dialects - the main thing is to be able to understand them.
Of course I know a few words I shouldn't use in Latin American Spanish and I know about the difference between the American s-sound and the European lisp, but I would not be able to speak in any pure dialect of Spanish. That wouldn't happen unless I decided to live in some specific place with a homogenous population who all spoke the same dialect - and I have no plans in that direction. But listening to different dialects is quite interesting. And I really like the Norwegian attitude to dialects. Edited by Iversen on 06 September 2012 at 9:58pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5783 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 12 of 39 06 September 2012 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Living in the UK I don't recall ever seeing any (modern) form of English
subtitled. From exposure we can all pretty easily understand almost every dialect (including the various US and antipodean dialects). I'm very glad that this is the case. A few, very different dialects such as broad Scots or broad Geordie would be borderline incomprehensible for people in the South of England (Iversen, I really commend you for learning Scots!); but you'll not see Scottish people being subtitled on UK TV because almost all Scots will speak standard Scots English (albeit with an accent) rather than broad Scots if you stick a camera in front of them (and some, of which I'm one, only speak standard [Scots] English anyway). I'm no expert but I think the same probably applies to Caribbean English as I can't understand (to take an example at random) broad Jamaican, but I don't recall ever needing subtitles to understand Jamaican people on UK TV. Edited by Random review on 06 September 2012 at 11:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4521 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 13 of 39 07 September 2012 at 12:08am | IP Logged | |||||
These days, the only Austrian dialect that gets subtitled on Austrian TV is Vorarlbergerisch, which is of a different dialect group than the rest of the dialects (it's very similar to Swiss dialects). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4638 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 14 of 39 07 September 2012 at 1:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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As some would assume, this does happen between some Arabic dialects.
Egyptian and Levantine dialects are virtually never subtitled in the Arab world. Gulf dialects may be subtitled when the viewers are in Morocco and Algeria, but very rarely when the viewers are speakers of another Mashriqi dialect (Egyptian, Levantine, Sudanese, etc.). Iraqi is an interesting case, since sometimes Egyptians have trouble with it, and there have been some instances where scenes of a movie - when the setting is in Iraq, for example - have been subtitled. When I asked Egyptians who were with me in Alexandria and Cairo, they stated that they could understand most of the dialect, but had more trouble with some of the vocabulary than they did with the Levantine, Hijazi, or Gulf dialects. Later I found that most of these words were Kurdish and seldom used Persian loan words. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4471 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 15 of 39 07 September 2012 at 2:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Native French speakers are subtitled in French if the producer of the TV show feels that a significant part of the audience will have too much trouble understanding. It is quite subjective so it is not rare to see someone being subtitled when you had no difficulty whatsoever understanding them or to not have subtitles when you could not get a word of what the person said. Usually, they err on the safe side though. People most frequently subtitled are Quebec French speakers, people from rural areas, teenagers and old people who mumble or have a strong accent and people whose voice is modified to preserve their anonymity.
I do not think it is necessarily a question of thinking that the standard language is superior. The reality is that we get exposure to the standard language and a few dialects but a lot of people do not get enough exposure to every dialect. Therefore, the choices are: not letting people with that dialect on TV, not caring that lots of people won't understand or having subtitles. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4527 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 16 of 39 07 September 2012 at 4:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Everything is subtitled in every Chinese dialect all the time. It's of course subtitled in standard written Putonghua.
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