I prefer watching shows and movies with subtitles in English to subtitles in my native language, so I often watch with subtitles intended for people with hearing loss - including music, sound effects and so on. I have found these somewhat strange, and would like to ask people who do have hearing loss if they find them helpful.
When the subtitles include subjective valuations, does that enhance your experience? I’m talking about things like “poignant instrumental music”,
“ethereal voice”, “haunting Gregorian chant” and the immortal “eerie instrumental music continues”. Do they fill a purpose for you? If you haven’t had hearing loss since birth, do you think it’s different for people who have?
I can hear the music OK, so those subtitles aren’t too useful. What I have trouble with is the dialog, and the level of difficulty seems to vary from movie to movie, depending on the actor’s voices and how the sound was mixed. I have a high-frequency hearing loss in both ears. Even if I was profoundly deaf, I don’t think subtitles like “poignant instrumental music” would be very helpful. Music is supposed to produce an emotional response. How do you do that with a subtitle?
It’s not so much intended to elicit a emotional response as to just let the viewer know that there is some music going on. Otherwise, a completely deaf person might just think the characters are just standing around doing nothing.
Describing the music (instead of just displaying “music”) can give an idea of the tone of the scene. One can infer that “haunting Gregorian chant” suggests a different scene than “light lilting music” even if they have never heard either.
Having been in in the business of producing just the sort of thing the OP is talking about, I can offer some perspective. The basic notion is that you’re captioning the entire audio portion of the program – the one thing inaccessible to the deaf audience. If the filmmaker saw fit to put in some kind of music, that has to be conveyed. And just as the filmmaker isn’t inserting random music or sound effects, your obligation as a captioner/subtitler isn’t to just put in something like “music plays.” That says nothing to the audience. A qualitative assessment is absolutely called for here. And sure, there’s subjectivity in how the music is described, but basically, any sort of descriptor is better than nothing.
You can argue that the captions don’t elicit the same emotional response as the music, and you’d be right – but still, what choice does the captioner have? The point is not to make value judgments about what people might or might not find valuable, but simply to render the soundtracks as it comes across to you, in the best way you can.