You know what I hate?

By Wolf Queen · August 15, 2009

When TV shows feel the need to caption English accents, even when they're perfectly comprehensible.

Seriously. They're speaking the same language. They aren't that hard to understand. Grow some ears, people. What the hell.

I don't know. Maybe people in this country are just stupid or something. I mean really. Unless they're speaking some British dialectical equivalent to ghetto-speak, there's seriously no reason for subtitles.

But who knows. I suppose it's possible that some people have spent their entire lives here without ever hearing an English accent before, but in this day and age, I don't see how that's really possible unless you live under a rock.

What's wrong with this country? Good lord.

Comments 6

JANUS2 Aug 15, 2009

Well that tells you exactly what US TV show bosses think of their audience!

honestgamer Staff Aug 15, 2009

There's probably a really good explanation, WQ. I've never seen a show do what you're describing, but stop to think about it for a second: the stupid Americans that you're supposing this would be meant to appease are too stupid to bother reading subtitles. They either never learned to read fast enough or they go to a movie specifically to avoid reading. It's pretty safe to assume that the subtitles are for a different audience. One possibility? Someone thought that the hearing-impaired might have trouble picking up the dialect. This is all assuming that you didn't accidentally press the 'CC' button on your remote, of course. ;-)

Felix_Arabia Aug 15, 2009

Hey WQ, next time you type something in a blog post, make it so we can understand what the hell you're saying. Your pidgin English is really hard to comprehend.

aschultz Aug 15, 2009

I actually enjoy captions on DVDs etc even when I know most of the words. For instance, I can catch 95% of what is on A Bit of Fry and Laurie. But the 5% I'm missing is sometimes quite funny and I'm glad the captions are there.

Also, I sometimes am looking at the background and miss the words even with regular old American English. It's nice to have this option with DVDs and stuff. I don't know if you can turn it on/off with newfangled TV's. I don't have one of those. But I think it'd be a nice safety valve.

randxian Aug 15, 2009

Yes, there are a lot of stupid people in this country. I deal with them on a daily basis.

Most of the cutomers I deal with are pretty cool and reasonably, but there are always those people who completely lack common sense and are always quick to blame others for their own mistakes.

sashanan Aug 17, 2009

Frequently done in Dutch with something as straightforward as a very slight Flemish accent. While dialects exists in far reaches of the Netherlands that are hard to follow for an outsider, Flemish is dead easy with only a slightly different intonation and the very occasional odd choice of wording (odd to a Dutchman that is). I guess they take a rather safe than sorry approach on subtitling.

Which brings me to another: on an English movie, particularly a complex one, I do still like my subtitles - I can understand what's being said otherwise, but if things move fast I might not keep up. Or when an actor is soft spoken or dramatic music plays during the scene, I end up missing some words.

Now in these cases I prefer English subtitles to Dutch ones, which after all involve a translation (and I get hung up on it when a translation feels slightly off to me, and I'm thinking about that instead of following the rest of the scene). The only problem with English subtitles on an English DVD is that they are usually one and the same as the subtitles for the hearing impaired, so every sound effect is transcribed too.

(Door opens)
(Slight creak)
(Dramatic music)
(She gasps)

I really, really have to try hard not to get hung up on THAT. It's so easy to laugh at it and then stop taking the movie seriously.