Social Effects of Subtitling In subtitling, Condensing, meaning summarizing is crucial, because viewers cannot

read as fast as they hear. This condensing is an art, which is mastered after years of

practice. It is great to play with language, trying to capturing fewer words and

without losing the nuances of tone and idiom which is being said on screen. One

might be a real poet in their own language, like a musician or an artist for example,

yet his/her art cannot reach a wider audience because of the language barrier.

Subtitles can come in handy here for both the artist's career and for other cultures

to be able to enjoy and understand good art.

Subtitling is of great social interest, but you cannot expect people to go out

demanding better subtitles. There are three aspects to this great social interest:

1) Education: Subtitling is of great educational value for children acquiring

language skills, for immigrants learning the language of their new country, and for

the elderly who can keep up their language by watching television. No other texts

are more widely read than subtitles. In India, there are projects to eliminate

illiteracy, where TV shows and films are subtitled in people's local languages

introducing illiterate people to their own alphabets. On a large scale it represents

the first step towards learning how to read and write.

2) The Deaf and Hard of Hearing: Subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing is

becoming a major growth market. Some western countries already require all the

programs to have subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing whose numbers are

high due to deficiencies and old age.

3) Entertainment: Subtitling is in fact very important o entertainment as well, and

entertainment is very important to people. It has become one of the major things in

life. The worst thing that can happen to people is death, then illness and these days

boredom. People cannot stand being bored, they need entertainment. Entertainment

is spoiled without subtitles if you cannot understand it on your own.

As soon as we see words written in our alphabets, we instantly start reading. We

are compulsive readers. You cannot see a text in your own language without

reading it, especially if what was around it was all foreign, you will surely have the

urge to understand it. If you are watching a movie which has subtitles that are too

long, contain mistakes or appear/disappear too early or too late, it will affect

negatively on your enjoyment of the movie.

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