Why do people find subtitles 'annoying'?

[ebikeerwidnes]

I used to find that I needed subtitles on most things

probably because the speakers on new TVs point backwards and are so small that they limit the rangle of sounds

but since I got hearing aids this is no longer necessary on most things

I didn;t realise that my hearing had started to go - was probably getting worse for years!

still need it on a few things - some series seems to think that it adds to the atmosphere for the characters to mutter in dark places!

 

[All uphill]

Because deafness is an invisible disability most people seem to find it difficult to accommodate in others.

I have a (former?) friend who habitually puts his hand in front of his mouth when he speaks; I used to tell him I can't understand unless I can lipread along with listening. Now I just let it go and don't respond.

I have no idea what the solution is.

 

[kynikos]

They're great, apart from those from the BBC which appear around 4 seconds after someone's said something.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

I appreciate them especially for watching US content.

Americans speak so fast and with a heavy accent that it is almost unitelligable, imo.

Made worse as movies are optimised for big screen environments and not TV's. Even the Movie sound mode on our TV has little discernable effect.

Maybe we need a new TV or maybe we need to stop watching American produced content as it is fairly dire in general and has an alien sense of humour.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

It's definitely a fairly modern thing with American films/TV.

We saw Odyssey recently at an IMAX cinema and the volume was so loud as to shake the entire building but that didn't mean that either I or my wife could understand the dialogue.

Contrast that with any classic Hollywood movie in black and white, such as Casablanca, and everything is as clear as a bell.

 

[fossyant]

I don't like them, but I wouldn't have an issue if someone in the room needed them. They annoy me - find them distracting. That said, I did watch a lot of the Mexican Drug Dealer shows in native Spanish with subtitles as I was on the turbo trainer - it was weird when I switched to the English dubbed episodes, just didn't 'fit'.

 

[Flick of the Elbow]

I too am unable to watch most tv programme these days without subtitles. I wish somebody would invent them for the radio too !

 

[fossyant]

I appreciate them especially for watching US content.

I actually find it quite funny when there is a 'global' programme, and they put sub titles up for broad English accents, perfectly understandable to us, but not to say, an American.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

This might help those with hearing aids who still struggle with TV audio.

Earlier this year I bought two gadgets by Resound; a TV streamer and a multi mic.

The plan for the TV streamer was to allow my wife to have the telly at a normal volume for her (too low for me) and I could independently adjust the volume delivered to my hearing aids by the streamer to a level that let me understand everything without annoying her. Both of us happy.😊

For boring technical reasons, the streamer wasn't compatible with my particular TV, so I sent that back for a refund.

The idea for the multi mic was to have my teacher wear it during class so I could hear her clearly. It's a big class and the standard hearing aids aren't enough. It works a treat and is well worth the money.

Then I had a brainwave 💡.

I clipped the multi mic to a cable behind the telly, where the speakers are, and it sends the audio direct to my ears, just like the streamer would.

Result: happy wife.

The mic is a little bigger than my thumb and very simple to use.



Cheapest place in the UK for these things is connevans.co.uk.

If you tick two boxes during purchase, one to confirm it's for personal use and another to say you have a hearing disability, you won't pay any VAT.

 

[YMFB]

At one point I was spending a lot of time on long haul flights and started watching Scandi Noir tv series on my iPad, all with subtitles.

 

[Once a Wheeler]

One reason why some people might find sub-titles annoying is that these people are heavily dependent on the written word, a habit often acquired in our education system. When confronted by a TV programme with sub-titles they are habitually drawn to reading the words rather than just listening and ignoring the text. When the programme is in your own language this can feel like eating your lunch whilst someone is trying to spoon-feed you the meal at the same time. A very frustrating feeling. How many CCers managed to pass a foreign language exam by figuring out the written text in a language they could not even use orally to order a cup of coffee? Textual dependence in action. The difference between textual and non-textual societies is enormous and I suspect compulsive sub-title reading can be part of that phenomenon in a lot of cases.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

For me the subtitles are a safety net. On some programmes I don't actually need them but if someone says a word that I miss it's easy to quickly glance down at the subtitles to catch it.

You don't have to read them slavishly and it's easy to learn not to.

 

[presta]

They can be annoying to those of us who need them as well.

They obscure the other captions on the screen, obscure peoples faces when they move them out of the way of the captions, and sometimes get stuck, and don't move back to the correct place afterwards. Altering the dialogue to make it fit on screen is annoying, as are the occasions when the AI itself doesn't hear correctly. AI clearly doesn't know the difference between hyperthermia and hypothermia, I notice. I used to quite enjoy watching the Scandi dramas on BBC4, but the novelty's worn off a bit now that I have to put up with subtitles all the time on English stuff as well.

Any live content. Even news programmes and chat shows have subtitles which are nonsensical. It’s very distracting

On live programmes they're worse than useless, they're so far out of sync that if you try to use them you end up losing both the speech and the text. It wouldn't be so bad if the time offset was consistent, but it varies all over the place. I've even seen the text appear several seconds before the speech on occasions, WTF's going on there?

When confronted by a TV programme with sub-titles they are habitually drawn to reading the words rather than just listening and ignoring the text.

That annoying scrolling banner across the bottom of the screen on 24hr news channels being a case in point.