james2025a

I live in Puerto Rico and am originally from England. There have been many times when i have gone to see a movie here in English and it provides subtitles in Spanish. However, when a third language comes into play many times it will continue to display subtitles in Spanish, but nothing for English. Why do they do this? I understand that too much text onscreen might take away from the movie, but isn't it going against the intended audience as the audio is in English?

My Spanish sucks by the way....so reading it will only partially help me out.

Ash Ketchum

In Hong Kong, the movies have traditionally had subtitles in both English and what they call "simplified Chinese" so that Mandarin speakers can read subtitles for lines delivered in Cantonese or vice versa if the film's dialogue is spoken in Mandarin.

I don't know of any other region in the world that does that.

I remember seeing subtitles in Spanish on American films in some neighborhoods in New York. WEST SIDE STORY had subtitles in Spanish in one theater in my neighborhood. But these instances were few and far between.

Dan

So yeah, in PR, if the theatre is geared towards a Spanish audience, then any particular print or copy of that film is also going to be geared toward the Spanish audience. Think of it from this perspective; someone who ONLY speaks Spanish (and not English at all) going to a Spanish theatre would expect to see Spanish subtitles during English scenes as well as Japanese, Italian, Polish, etc. scenes. They'd all be Spanish subtitled in that copy. If that same film has a scene in Spanish, chances are there would be NO subtitles at all during that scene.

A copy that IS intended for an English audience would have no subtitles throughout an entire English film, unless there were specific lines in a different language.

davidh777

Right, the intended audience of the MOVIE is English, but the intended audience of that SHOWING is Spanish. They're not trying to cover people who may happen to be in the theater who speak other languages.

rw2516

I can't figure this one out. Watched Hidalgo BD with no subtitles. When the tent with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on the side was shown, there was English subtitle "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show". When somebody is reading magazine with "Wild West Tales" on cover, english subtitle of "Wild West Tales" is shown. Another one was phonograph with Edison Phonograph Co.(or something) logo on it, had an english subtitle for the logo. Why have subtitles to read what's in the same language as on the screen. If you can read the subtitle, you can read it in the film. Unless it's an authoring glitch of the BD.

Rex Fenestrarum

I guess it depends on the local custom, too. IIRC, Italians hate subtitles, so most movies shown in Italy are dubbed instead. In The Netherlands, they're all about subtitles... which really annoys some of my friends who moved there a couple years back. They're in the same boat as the OP: the movie is in English, the subtitles are Dutch, but any time someone speaks in a non-English language, those subtitles are also in Dutch. They've lived there long enough now so that they can "get the jist" of what the Dutch subs say, but not enough to really get the nuance. But it was really hard for them at first... so much so that they would time trips to the UK to coincide with movie releases so they could see it there instead of the Netherlands.

Abob Teff

[redneck] Just learn to speak 'Merican! [/redneck]

hanshotfirst1138

I can learn to speech English gooder than you.

JumpCutz

This is probably the gooderest thread currently in Movie Talk.