It’s Friday night. I click on the infamous red logo, and there appears Netflix’s selection of Scandinavian television, an endless supply of series that all manage to be forgettably similar and uniquely amazing.
Baa-duuummmm.
The show begins—I instinctively flick my eyes down for the very first words of this new, mysterious series.
There they are, in their beautiful, easy-to-read white font: subtitles.
I love them.
Subtitles are useful outside of international TV. I turn them on when I’m watching any show or movie, not because the dialogue is difficult for me to follow. Rather, I delight in the act of reading the subtitles as quickly as possible and relish in the knowledge of what the characters are about to say, mere moments before they utter the words. The sense of prophetic glee that this provides is wonderful, and in my mind, demonstrates subtitles to be an improvement to any form of audiovisual entertainment.
There are obvious benefits to subtitles; world-class movies and TV shows are made (surprise, surprise!) in languages other than English. After being stuck at home for nearly a year, browsing the catalog for new English-only shows is a struggle.
Behold! The international entertainment section!
At this point, someone may be thinking, “Well, that’s what dubbing and voice actors are for.”
And if you ask me, watching a show dubbed in any language other than the original is a disgrace. Anyone who does that cannot be trusted.
Yet, for some reason, a survey of 2,200 Americans conducted by the Hollywood Reporter (and reported by Statista.com) found that 59 percent of respondents prefer dubbed entertainment over subtitled entertainment. So, in other words: be wary of those around you.
A question for those strangers in the majority— how can you possibly deal with the agonizing mismatch between the audio your TV emits and the movements of the actors’ mouths on the screen? With the lag between when a character gestures to accentuate a point and when the English voice actor actually begins speaking?
Moreover, considering that the average adult, as reported by Forbes, reads at 300 words-per-minute, or five words a second, surely there is plenty of time to skim the dialogue and simultaneously revel in the wonder of corresponding audio and facial movement.
Finally, anyone trying to learn a new language can actually practice with international TV. I recently tried this out with a new Netflix show Lupin, which is entirely in French. Try short spurts with French audio and subtitles, and then after a few minutes, you can switch the subtitles back to English if you feel like you can’t follow. Hearing the French audio and having French subtitles forces your brain to decode the new language, because, after all, no-one likes a show they can’t understand.
It’s Friday night again.
Let’s see what the international section (and its wonderful subtitles) has in store for today.