What's the story with foreign english speakers being subtitled on American TV?

[mogiaw]

I saw Ripley's Believe It or Not last night and it had subtitles for a guy from England. On VH1 when they have foreign english-speaking rockstars etc. on they often subtitle them. Is the American television-watching public that dense that it can't make out what the people are saying?
I suppose I'm more bewildered than angry but i couldn't think of anywhere else to post this.
mogiaw

[Mehitabel]

Card-carrying American here and I hardly EVER see this. There are some accents, like thick Geordie or Scottish, that occasionally are subtitled in the news, but mostly it's people like Yasser Arafat or somebody whose English is not quickly decipherable. It's a huge country and we simply don't hear those sort of accents very often; Brits who travel around the US all seem to be doing the BBC English thing, at least in front of us.

I understand that some movies are re-dubbed with less strong accents for the American market, but I don't know how commonplace this is.

[gluteus maximus]

Blame Robert Carlyle... and the "Americanized" versions of Harry Potter.

[Coldfire]

I'm sorry, could someone explain to me what that Mick in the OP is getting at? Can't make heads nor tails of it.

[presidebt]

Originally posted by Mehitabel
Card-carrying American here and I hardly EVER see this.

I'm in the States too and I've been seeing more and more of what the OP describes lately. I wish I could remember what I was watching, but just a couple of weeks ago I saw some Australian guy talking with subtitles. He seemed to be speaking clearly enough for me, so my first thought was wtf?? If I think of it, I'll come back and post.

[whiterabbit]

I couldn't get through Life of Brian without subtitles -- I wasn't getting more than half of the dialogue, which sucked. But I CHOSE to turn them on, I didn't assume that ALL Americans would need to.

[Rube E. Tewesday]

I can't think of a specific example, but I know I've seen this, too. Yet they never subtititle those bull riders, who make Boomhauer sound like Gore Vidal. "Dang ol' bull ...mumble mumble mumble...eight seconds.....mumble mumble mumble....tell ya what"

[WILLASS]

I know that 'Trainspotting' was subtitled in the States and that is pretty understandable (my Grandad came from Glasgow and I never understood a word he said!) but I can't see why anyone without an amazingly strong accent peppered with colloquialisms would require subtitles. It is fairly rare to hear anyone with an exceptionally strong accent on British TV so I would have thought it was a lot less common on U.S TV.

[dropzone]

Have they finally released Mad Max over here WITHOUT the dubbing into Merkin? I should think we've been listening to Mel Gibson long enough to make out what he's saying when he's speaking Strine.

[Mehitabel]

OK, I guess I need to get out more, but I do go to a lot of British and Irish movies and have never seen subtitles in the theater. Of course, maybe the versions I'm seeing have been dubbed already. None of the Van trilogy (THE COMMITMENTS, THE SNAPPER, etc.) or stuff like BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM was subtitled, and neither was GEORGY'S GIRL, although on TV there were some titles for some characters.

[Larry Mudd]

Originally posted by gluteus maximus
Blame Robert Carlyle... and the "Americanized" versions of Harry Potter.

Why Robert Carlyle? Admittedly, the first really perplexing use of English-to-English subtitles that I ever saw was in Riff Raff. (I think the only time I saw it before that was in The Harder They Come, which was bad enough.)

It's really hard for me to comprehend how these are useful, but I have met people who claim an inability to comprehend even the lightest of accented English. (My dear old mum, for example, can't follow Fawlty Towers.) Less head-scratchingly, I have a housemate from Taiwan who has a hard time with Scottish and Austrailian accents.

At any rate, I'm really glad that we've moved over to DVD so subtitles can be toggled on and off -- They drive me to distraction, especially when they completely change the phrasing. I've seen "Cheers!" "translated" as "Goodbye!" Are there people out there that would have been completely unable to work out for themselves what was happening? "What a minute, are they parting company for a while, or are have they got beverages concealed in their coats?" Eesh.

[minor7flat5]

I have seen this recently as well, usually when the speaker has a thick foreign accent, such as a German WWII vet speaking on the History channel.

I suppose that one could find this offensive, but I look at it like this:

The number of non-native speakers in the U.S. is significant. It is challenging for a non-native speaker to understand heavily accented speech (just imagine trying to understand poorly-spoken Spanish if that is your second language).

My Brazilian wife has confirmed this theory on several occasions: she has a tough time trying to understand accented English even in face-to-face communication.

I imagine that they are trying to be considerate to people in their audience who are not native English speakers. In particular, in my neck of the woods (the northeast), we have a very international blend of residents.

Oh yes... my wife couldn't understand a single word of The Full Monty. I understood about half of the words. The film really opened up for me when I turned on the subtitles

[cckerberos]

Although I don't think that I can remember seeing any instances of what the OP describes on American TV, if it happening, America wouldn't be unique. Here in Japan most speech by foreigners on TV are subtitled regardless of how clearly the foreigner is speaking.

[gluteus maximus]

Originally posted by Larry Mudd
Why Robert Carlyle? I've seen "Cheers!" "translated" as "Goodbye!" Are there people out there that would have been completely unable to work out for themselves what was happening? "What a minute, are they parting company for a while, or are have they got beverages concealed in their coats?" Eesh.

Originally posted by gluteus maximus
Blame Robert Carlyle... and the "Americanized" versions of Harry Potter.

Re: Robert Carlyle... it were a joke.


Although, the first time I watched Trainspotting, I couldn't understand a single word Begbie said. In the version I saw, the only time English subtitles appeared was for this short conversation in the nightclub:

(Gail & Lizzy)
What are you two talking about?

(Tommy & Spud)
Football. What were you talking about?

(Gail & Lizzy)
Shopping.

I was referring to the Harry Potter books, not the movies.

[asterion]

Originally posted by dropzone
Have they finally released Mad Max over here WITHOUT the dubbing into Merkin? I should think we've been listening to Mel Gibson long enough to make out what he's saying when he's speaking Strine.

Yes, at least on DVD. The dubbed track is available as a second audio track, but it defaults to the original.

[ruadh]

Originally posted by WILLASS
I know that 'Trainspotting' was subtitled in the States

No, it wasn't, not in the release I saw anyway.

(Apart from the shopping scene gluteus maximus refers to, which was subtitled in the British release as well.)

[Road Rash]

I have been able to understand most British-english shows without effort, even Trainspotting. Benny Hill took some effort. But my primary argument for subtitles on (some) english,

Noel Gallagher (from Oasis).

[Miller]

I've seen this done when the speaker is an American with a particularly thick regional accent, too. I think minor7flat5 hit the nail on the head when he said it was for people for whom English is a second language.

[Zoe]

I began to notice subtitled English speech from other countries about ten years ago, but it doesn't happen often. These particular young men were Irish.

I have also seen some American dialects subtitled in American productions. So don't feel too offended.

One person's "particularly thick regional accent" is another person's normal lingo. There is no standard dialect.

My husband and I have begun putting the subtitles on as we watch DVDs no matter what the dialect.

I had an Aussie boyfriend once who washed his hands in a bison. Strange, don't you think?

[Menocchio]

I'm all for it actually. For whatever reason I have a devil of a time comprehending really thick accents (not European ones, so much as Asian, actually). I do my best IRL, but sometimes still worryif I come off like an idiot and/or bigot when I ask my Japanese co-worker to repeat something for the fiftieth time.

So yeah, I want subtitles.

[Sublight]

Originally posted by cckerberos
Although I don't think that I can remember seeing any instances of what the OP describes on American TV, if it happening, America wouldn't be unique. Here in Japan most speech by foreigners on TV are subtitled regardless of how clearly the foreigner is speaking.

Although what bugs me about that is that it's always subtitled in katakana only, to emphasize that it's gaijin Japanese.

[Odesio]

Originally posted by mogiaw
I saw Ripley's Believe It or Not last night and it had subtitles for a guy from England. On VH1 when they have foreign english-speaking rockstars etc. on they often subtitle them. Is the American television-watching public that dense that it can't make out what the people are saying?

Sometimes your accents make it difficult to understand what's being said. There's a guy from Scotland around here and I only understand half of what he says. If it makes you feel better I've heard American accents that were so bad I'd need subtitles to understand them as well.

Marc

[Xgemina]

There are times when I wish more shows had subtitles. I normally don't have much of a problem with accents but I get tired of being the de facto translator for friends and family. My roommate constantly asks me "translate" at home. It's funny, he has no problems understanding the thickest Indian or middle eastern accent but gets lost with the slightest English or Scottish accent.

I remember going to see The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain in the theatre with my girlfriend in Chadron, NE. It was a slow night and there were perhaps 15 people in the place so when the movie started we were all pretty spread out. My girlfriend was constantly asking "what did he/she say," so I basically had to translate the entire movie for her. By the time the film finished we had a tight group of 10 people around our seats listening to me. It really was rather sad.

[Futile Gesture]

Look, no accent is 'thick' anymore than it's 'thin'. They are all equally broad, but just in different directions. If you can't understand someone's accent it is neither the fault of the speaker or the accent. If anyone is at fault, it's you because you do not have any experience of that accent.

From experience and discussion with others I know that many in America, particularly the more rural areas, simply never, ever hear an accent that is in any way different from their own. So anyone without a standard American accent may as well be speaking Greek as far as they are concerned. But if you do hear a number of accents everyday you begin to get an ear for it, and become better skilled at tuning into what people are saying. This is why, IMHO, the average Brit is far better at following unfamiliar accents than the average American.

So maybe the subtitles are justified. They aren't because the speaker is incomprehensible, but that the viewer is rubbish at accents.

[don't ask]

Ripley's Believe It Or Not do it quite a lot. It is often repeated here as a lunchtime show in school holidays. In one episode they even subtitled all the Aussies, strewth. But then you guys dubbed The Road Warrior didn't you?

Has anyone seen Snatch with subtitles, do they have them for Mickey O'Neil?

[minor7flat5]

Originally posted by Futile Gesture
From experience and discussion with others I know that many in America, particularly the more rural areas, simply never, ever hear an accent that is in any way different from their own. So anyone without a standard American accent may as well be speaking Greek as far as they are concerned.

That's a fairly broad brush there.
The urban centers of the U.S. are quite diverse in cultures. In both my workplace and my place of worship, natural born Americans are in the minority. In my tiny church (~30 members), we have members from Barbados, Trinidad, Haiti, Romania, Ecuador, Brazil, Korea, Jamaica, Yugoslovia, Japan, and Mexico, to name the first few that come to mind (I realize that English is the native language of some of these -- my point here is that the group is diverse).
Considering that a sizable portion of Americans live in urban centers, many of us may have more contact with different accents than the average Brit.
I recognize that you did qualify your remarks by stating "in the more rural areas", but that excludes a significant number of Americans.

One type of difference I would agree with (IMO): I don't think that we have the rich variety of regional accents that you do over the pond. Hence, when I say that non-rural Americans are potentially more accustomed to accents, I am referring to accents of non-native speakers.

[GorillaMan]

This week I saw a BBC documentary on James Brown - and it stated at the beginning that Brown's words would be subtitled, at his own request. I guess he's enough commonsense and self awareness to know that the average Brit has a hell of a time uunderstanding him.

[widdershins]

My R1 Superbit version of Snatch has multiple subtitle options including English (which has subtitles for all characters) and a Pikey option (that just has sutitles for Mickey). I got tired of explaining to my fellow Americans when the film came out, that if you couldn't understand what Mickey was saying it was because you weren't supposed to. I only got about 50% of what he said the first time I saw the film with effort, and I'm probably above average at getting heavily accented English not native to my part of the Southeastern US, just because I watch many non-American shows and films.

Cable channel FX has finally started to show the Aussie accented original of Mad Max rather than the dreadful and distracting 'meriken accented version that has been floating around on cable, syndication, and home video for years. Can't speak for other channels that have shown it recently (like USA, TBS, and SciFi) since I haven't watched on there.

I've grown used to the subtitles on some non-American English speakers, although I think it is usually unnecessary. Both Gallagher Bros. get the subtitle treatment on US TV quite often. As do many Japanese and German WWII veterans on The History Channel. Even a friend of late wrestler Andre the Giant was subtitled for an episode of Biography, although the man had a noticable French-Canadian accent he was clearly understood at all times as far as I was concerned.

I have been bothered by the subtitling of some Americans on US TV, like James Brown, since I sometimes wonder if there isn't a touch of racism to who gets the subtitle treatment. Although there are times I've personally needed it since many Creole accents throw me quite easily and MTV subtitled old interviews with Sun Ra when covering his death.

[Rayne Man]

A couple of times when I have viewed TV stations from Germany they have put up subtitles when there is a Swiss-German talking.I presume that Swiss-German is so far removed from ordinary German that they have to do this.

Does the same thing happen when South American programmes are shown in Spain and vice-versa?

[ruadh]

Originally posted by Rayne Man
A couple of times when I have viewed TV stations from Germany they have put up subtitles when there is a Swiss-German talking.I presume that Swiss-German is so far removed from ordinary German that they have to do this.

Yes, in fact they're far more removed from each other than British (even Manc or Glaswegian) English is from American English, or than South American Spanish is from Castillian. In fact, Swiss German and Standard German are generally mutually incomprehensible.

[Eva Luna]

Originally posted by Futile Gesture
From experience and discussion with others I know that many in America, particularly the more rural areas, simply never, ever hear an accent that is in any way different from their own. So anyone without a standard American accent may as well be speaking Greek as far as they are concerned. But if you do hear a number of accents everyday you begin to get an ear for it, and become better skilled at tuning into what people are saying. This is why, IMHO, the average Brit is far better at following unfamiliar accents than the average American.

I agree with Part 1 of what you say...one of my funnier moments of grad school was driving from Bloomington, IN to Chicago with my Russian then-boyfriend. His English was excellent, if not entirely unaccented - he'd gone to a special English school and had been speaking it nearly as long as I had. Nobody on campus had a problem understanding him.

Then we stopped for lunch in lovely Lebanon, IN, a town of maybe 200 people and a downtown a block long. When he tried to order lunch, the waitress couldn't understand a word he said, no matter how slowly or clearly he spoke. I had to undertake some English-to-English interpreting. It was hilarious.

On the other hand, I have a Welsh client, and whenever I talk to him I damn well wish my phone had subtitles. I grew up in a major metro area and have traveled to a good dozen foreign countries and worked with immigrants my whole career, so I'm damn used to accents. But this guy is from a small rural Welsh village that has to be reached by rowboat half the year, and I feel like an idiot, but I keep having to ask him to repeat himself. It's gotten easier with time, but I don't know whether that's because his accent has neutralized, or I've gotten used to it. Then again, his English boss doesn't understand him half the time either, so I don't feel so badly.

And you think a major American city like New York or Chicago has a shortage of different accents and dialects? That's pretty Anglocentric of you.

[Neurotik]

I remember when I was living in the UK for a while, I had no problem understanding 90% of the people I met, except for odd bits of slang that threw me every once in a while. Then one day my English buddy Ralph and I had to go canvassing in some of the Council houses in Winchester and we had this Labour supporter start yelling at us. Particularly me, as I was American. Basically, it sounded like he was yelling gibberish at me and I could only pick up maybe 30% of what he was saying. (I picked up the "maybe you should fix your own fucking country before coming over here" part). As my friend and I were walking away, I told him I had no idea what that guy was saying to me. And he replied that he only picked up maybe half of it, which I found funny.

Anyway, this story has no point, except that accents can be difficult. And if the accent is going to be unintelligible to most of the viewing audience, then subtitles should be used.

And I'd love to watch Futile Gesture come over here and have a talk with someone from southeast DC and see how much he could pick up.

[curly chick]

I think sub-titles are, in essence, a good thing and that the moral of the story seems to be that just because you understand/don't understand an accent which is different to your own, you can't surmise the same thing for the next person.

I worked in Limerick for years and there were a gang of North Kerry-ites in the place - when they got together they might as well have been speaking Dutch for all I could understand, given that I understand no Dutch whatsoever.

Despite having watched a fair amount of American telly in my life, any time I happen upon one of those Oprah/Springer/Ricki/etc type programmes, there is bound to be a number of people on the panel speaking English that the audience patently understands, but the only portion of which I can decipher is the portion after the full stop -
KnowwhatI'msaying?

Er no, not at all, now as you mention it. Not the merest suggestion of a whisper of a notion.
Pass me that remote control.

[Mehitabel]

Like I said yesterday, I need to watch more TV because I still say I don't see it very often. One use I have seen is also in music--in English-language operas during complex or especially high soprano arias, like Madame Mao's in Nixon in China, which are very hard to discern especially from TV.

I will say that, while I don't have a dese dem dose Bronx accent or a pahk the cah Boston one (spent half my life divided between them), the occasional word will slip out when I'm relaxed that the people around me can't understand. But, like most Americans, I do resort to a flatter, slower, more formal tone when meeting new people or in business settings, in the understanding that I need to accomodate them until I know what they themselves sound like. But there have been times like when I went to Bermuda and could not understand the chatter behind me on the bus, even though it was clearly in English.

I had no idea American speakers were ever subtitled in English-speaking nations abroad--I thought fifty years of a steady diet of our TV had ensured that everybody knew how we spoke. And that we all sounded like Tom Brokaw or Jennifer Aniston. Anyway, if it's done be assured there's no condescension involved--they wouldn't bother with the expense if the viewers themselves hadn't said they wanted it at some point.

[Mehitabel]

Oh yeah, one more thing I just remembered--when EastEnders had a run on PBS over here, the papers ran articles deciphering some of the terms that were used. Some people gave up on it saying they had no clue what was going on.

They show Jerry Springer in Ireland?! Uhm...you do know a lot of those people are actors, and everybody's goaded to be as trashy and loud as possible, and that nobody takes it seriously over here, right?

[curly chick]

Yeah, we know that, but we pretend we don't so we can say:

"Feck! Them Yanks are all mad fuckers. Faith and Begob and Bejazus"

[Beagle]

Sometimes it is hilarious. I've seen native English speakers from Africa with subtitles. Force of habit? Translator paid by the job, not the hour? My favourite is when it's an actual English person. The irony...

OTOH, Keith Richards needs 24-7 translation and closed captioning. Well, if one cares.

[gluteus maximus]

Originally posted by Futile Gesture
Look, no accent is 'thick' anymore than it's 'thin'. They are all equally broad, but just in different directions. If you can't understand someone's accent it is neither the fault of the speaker or the accent. If anyone is at fault, it's you because you do not have any experience of that accent.

From experience and discussion with others I know that many in America, particularly the more rural areas, simply never, ever hear an accent that is in any way different from their own. So anyone without a standard American accent may as well be speaking Greek as far as they are concerned. But if you do hear a number of accents everyday you begin to get an ear for it, and become better skilled at tuning into what people are saying. This is why, IMHO, the average Brit is far better at following unfamiliar accents than the average American.

So maybe the subtitles are justified. They aren't because the speaker is incomprehensible, but that the viewer is rubbish at accents.

I find myself in agreement with a lot of what Futile Gesture is saying here... in other words; it's "all in the ear of the beholder", so to speak...

I knew that I couldn't understand Begbie in Trainspotting because of my lack of exposure to Scottish "working class" thugs, but until I was 18 and went 80 miles away to the "big city" to university, I had no idea that I pronounced the word 'color' differently than people in... well, almost every other part of the country. Yeah, geographically, I grew up in Appalachia, but in a town of 35,000 or so... not really hillbillies... really! Yet, everybody I knew until I moved away to go to university would have told this joke with the following pronunciation:

(warning: NOT PC!)

SPOILER:

Q: What's Helen Keller's favorite keller (color)?
A: Corduroy!

OK, so maybe I am from Appalachia...

[jeevmon]

I seem to recall seeing subtitling in "Bend it Like Beckham" and "Monsoon Wedding" where the subtitling was basically for the purpose of decoding one word because the speaker spoke entirely in English except for one word in Hindi or Punjabi. Which I found interesting, because the fact that Indians use Hindi words when speaking English and vice versa is something I've lived with for so long that it doesn't throw me at all anymore. But non-Indians with whom I've seen these movies have wondered whether people really talk that way in India.

[manwithaplan]

Originally posted by curly chick
I worked in Limerick for years and there were a gang of North Kerry-ites in the place - when they got together they might as well have been speaking Dutch for all I could understand, given that I understand no Dutch whatsoever.

My missus is from North Kerry and while the rough edges had been knocked off her by the time I met her, meeting her father was interesting. He must have thought I was a complete imbecile suffering from a rare disease that causes unstoppable smiling and nodding. I now understand him perfectly but any mates who visit are at a complete loss. I still have slight problems with various local heads such as my brother in law but I was heartened when I confided in my father-in-law that I couldn't understand everything his son said and he replied "I haven't a fuckin' clue what that gobshite says half the time myself".

Funnily enough, I understand everyone fine when I'm hammered, even those speaking foreign languages.

[Charlie Tan]

[tangent]
What's up with that dubbing in news features? Guy from midle east country speaks Arabic. Fade out original sound and start dubbing in English, with a guy faking a heavy Arabic accent.
This bugs me just as much as Germans in WWII movies speaking English w/German accents, when they're talking among themselves (Vee haf vays to make dem tahk).

[Xgemina]

Originally posted by Futile Gesture
Look, no accent is 'thick' anymore than it's 'thin'. They are all equally broad, but just in different directions. If you can't understand someone's accent it is neither the fault of the speaker or the accent. If anyone is at fault, it's you because you do not have any experience of that accent.

True; sorry, bad choice of words on my behalf. I did not mean for it to be regarded as disparaging the speaker. However, I do not find that it is the listeners fault either, unless they're being an ass about the whole thing.

Many people from my neck of the woods generally do not have much experience with different accents. Therefore, they have difficulty, not just with english speakers from different countries, but also various US accents. IOW, some have just as much difficulty understanding someone from England as much as someone from rural Kentucky.

[Futile Gesture]

Originally posted by Eva Luna
And you think a major American city like New York or Chicago has a shortage of different accents and dialects? That's pretty Anglocentric of you.

Can't see how, being neither in England or English.

The big difference with accents in a large city populated by diverse immigrants is that although they are starting from a different language, they are all rapidly heading towards the same agreed position; American English with an accent that is fairly standard across the entire continent.

However, this isn't a contest. My point remains that, through the facts of larger population size and smaller divergence in accent, the average American does not encounter as many accents in their everyday life. Hence they are not as practiced in understanding them.

[don't ask]

Actually looking at the thread title and the reference to foreign english speakers makes me realise that the most common use in Australia appears to be Kooris. Not very foreign at all. It always makes me uncomfortable whenever the person is a local resident because of the thought that they may see their appearance.

[jjimm]

Originally posted by don't ask
Actually looking at the thread title and the reference to foreign english speakers makes me realise that the most common use in Australia appears to be Kooris. Not very foreign at all. It always makes me uncomfortable whenever the person is a local resident because of the thought that they may see their appearance.

Can I get subtitles for this post?

[Shakes]

There is a scene in Tomb Raider II where luara Croft is talking in spanish (at least it sounded like spanish) to a family but when they put the subtitles on the bottom; guess what? THEY WERE IN SPANISH TOO!!!

Did I mention this was an American movie..


I saw it on pay-per-view if that makes a difference..

[Liberal]

Have you ever watched Billy Elliot? If you're an American, try it without subtitles and report back.

[Rayne Man]

I seem to remember that Kes ( A Kestrel for a Knave) was given subtitles when shown in the US because of the Yorkshire accents.

[fushj00mang]

mogiaw,

But have you ever heard Ozzy Osbourne speaking? Good God on a tall ladder, son!

[Lynn Bodoni]

I'm moving this to GQ, where it probably should have started in the first place.

Lynn