The presumption of linguistic ignorance

[olegvolk]

Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.

If I watch a French or a Czech film, it usually has subtitles for whatever languages are spoke on screen. If a character speaks German or Spanish, the words are subtitled.

Most American movies just put a caption [speaks German] or [Speaking Italian], the apparent assumption

Comments

[oldhorseman]

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There was a time when at least some Hollywood producers gave American viewers more credit... The great 1960s show "COMBAT!" actually had characters speaking appropriate languages, and expected the audience to either understand enough of the German, French, and Italian or be smart enough to infer the meaning from the context.

[skreidle]

... I'll admit that I don't turn on CC, but I've never seen anything like [speaks German]; if there are words spoken in foreign language in a primarily English film, there are either translation subtitles, or the director deemed that the specifics of what was said were unimportant to the plot, or understandable from context.