I must admit that I am seriously thinking of closing my Netflix FR account, about 90% of it is of no interest to me at all. But the 10% which is not bad I would be prepared to continue to pay for.
If only they would change their subtitle policy. They seem to think that subs are needed just to allow people to watch films in a language they do not understand. But what about the deaf and hard of hearing?
Scandinavian films are a case in point. Because English is so widely understood and spoken they often break into English ( recent cross border Finnish/Swedish film was a case in point) and the subtitles disappear. Not only the Scandis though. Last night I was watching a French documentary about a serial killer who, with his wife, had killed over a period of many years and one victim had been an English au pair girl. The programme then included long interviews with an English detective and the girlâs family. The subtitles ceased at that point and I was in the ridiculous position of watching people speaking in English while reading subtitles in French which I had been forced to switch to in order not to miss the substance.
I donât think thatâs Davidâs point. We have the same problem David. We too have English subtitles on all the time and find Netflixâs policy of not including them infuriating.
We are at a time in our lives where American accents, regional accents, muttering, background music too loud means that most of the stuff we watch we cannot follow unless we have English subtitles up.
We were able to watch Foyles War without subtitles - cut glass accents
We only discovered Broadchurch late in the day and thought great, we can catch up on Netflix - Nope! Only subtitles? French!
In general the authors of subtitles do recognise that there are two distinct audiences for subtitles and might well have both âEnglish for the hard of hearingâ and â âEnglish for non-English speakersâ subtitles available.
Whether an individual production has all the subtitles that you want, and whether they survive broadcast or streaming is a totally different question, of course.
David - if your French is good enough have you considered engaging French subtitles? Presumably as both Finnish/Swedish and English are foreign from the French perspective all would be translated for you.
My point exactly and precisely, I want the S/Ts in English even when I am listening to English dialogue, and @billybutcher , yes I can though it does require a level of speed reading that I am not always comfortable with over a long period. I can eat my meal flashing glances to take in the whole of an English S/T in an instant but with French I have to read it in full and not to mention the not so simultaneous translation in my brain.
And, as I said, last night I did switch to French subs when they started speaking English with no subs and even continued to the end in French when they started speaking in that language again.
I think what I should do is watch more French films with French subtitles in future to improve and quicken my comprehension. Now, on that point, Netflix has French subs for French dialogue so why canât they have English subs for English dialogue? Someone in that organisation obviously recognises the hard of hearing aspect of the things.
I think that this is a general thing - it seems much more common to have subs for the hard of hearing *only* in the original language of the production - the justification presumably being that there is not a lot of difference between the two audiences for non-original languages (but this can fall down in multi-language productions, as you note).
I have found on visits to Poland they screen a lot of US films and shows and even worse than dubbing they have the âLecturnâ(nor sure of spelling). This is usually a male who reads ALL the actors lines. Infuriating when you canât turn it off.
I get frustrated with French films we buy on DVD and they only have English subtitles. We like to improve our French switching between English and French subtitles. Fortunately thatâs when Netflix comes into itâs own. I can understand Davidâs frustration though.
Yes, I think you are making the same point as @billybutcher, subs for the deaf are only in the country of the streamer/broadcaster, in this case France. Iâll just have to brush up on my French reading skills then, not sure if that avoids American spelling and idiom though.
I simply couldnât continue watching what you describe though @MichaelL. That would definitely be out for me.
I stopped watching UK / US based media a few years ago, and wasnât a big TV viewer even before, but I enjoy watching some French TV - mainly Arte online (what a wonderful resource!) , live football and those car restoration progs, but all with French subtitles because my reading is better than my listening. Also because the French spoken on TV isnât like wot they speak around here! (12).
Yes, but that is another case for this thread. My main interest on that is wildlife documentaries and quite often they donât have subtitles. A major failing of that channel imo.
You might enjoy some of these programmes listed on the link below. When I lived in S Africa, I was amazed by the depth of knowledge expected of viewers of wild life docus (especially local ornithology). Of course most of the experts were white Afrikaans speakers and theyâre not so common these days. Nevertheless the progammes were usually in English or 50/50.
Is that strange then? I know nothing about such things but donât things like subtitles originate from the makers of the programmes rather than the method of transmission? Ours comes from Fransat.
Normally, I think, Iâm not very techy either, it is you that tells your box how you want to view stuff. If I understand they generally broadcast with all the options and you see what you choose??
Interestingly, I find that with the VPN on. I can view a selection that is different to those offered on Netflix.fr without the VPN.
The only slight bug is that Netfix keep introducing a pop-up that asks me to remove the VPN. My work around is to alter the VPN (Nord, so lots) and continue. Works well as long as you have the patience.
