Poll of the Day > Why is the subtitle option called "for the hearing impaired"?

(+) Yeah! (+)

....On so many movies?

There's like at least 3 reasons I can think of off the top of my head right in this moment where subtitles are useful even if a person has no hearing impairments.

It seems unnecessarily insulting on the movies part for no reason.
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If the movie is in English and you don't have hearing problems, why would you have subtitles on?

What a bizarre thing to take issue with

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CaptainStrong posted...

If the movie is in English and you don't have hearing problems, why would you have subtitles on?

General support? It is not like they get in the way or anything.
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CaptainStrong posted...

If the movie is in English and you don't have hearing problems, why would you have subtitles on?

Because I'm danish and it can be difficult to sometimes understand what's being said or because I'm watching at a low volume.

There's normal subtitles which is the dialogue in writing/transcribed/etc.

Then hearing impaired is where they include the dialogue, but also describe the sounds as well eg "loud music" or "door knock" or "footsteps approaching". ie. it helps those who can't really hear to have a visual description of what the audio is.

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CaptainStrong posted...

If the movie is in English and you don't have hearing problems, why would you have subtitles on?

I never watch anything without subtitles on. I never want to miss any dialogue, incidental or otherwise. There are countless examples of reasons why it's way better to have subs on: from seeing what's being said while a crowd of people are all talking at once, to puns only being understood if you see how they're spelled, to lines that are included in subs because they were in the script but never made it onto the actual sound mix for whatever reason, to barely intelligible PA announcements; the list is endless.
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Whilst subtitles can sometimes spoil the movie/show/etc, I find it very helpful because sometimes I like the second confirmation of what I've heard... and sometimes I have the audio turned down as I have a sleeping baby in our apartment :(

My home theater system is going to waste :(

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What exactly do you think subtitles are for? The hearing impaired.
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I use them if I am eating something crunchy.
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papercup posted...

What exactly do you think subtitles are for? The hearing impaired.

Subtitles are for everyone.
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I find more and more people that have subtitles on as default. It really weirds me out seeing so many people do it without any reason.
Mind you, I don't mind subtitles and prefer them over a dub, but I find them annoying when unnecessary.
The amount of times my girlfriend and I watch a movie and I have to turn off the subtitles cause she doesn't notice them is countless.
They're distracting in my eyes. I like to go into things without much knowledge and I don't want subtitles drawing my attention.

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Subtitles used to distract me but Im good at selectively reading them if I need to confirm I heard something correctly. Maybe you just get used to it over time.

I only started because my Mum used to always have them enabled when we rented a DVD. Old times.

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Because their hearing is.. impaired.
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I use them sometimes. Sometimes, I use them a lot...
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Terrible audio balance because the movie didnt have a good sound editor

Constant kid noises all around you

Heavily accented speakers/actors in the movie who probably need to perfect thier English skills

I'm on a train or at work or somewhere else and dont have earbuds so the volume needs to be way down

Wanting to know if they actually subtitled the movie correctly or inserted some funny or ridiculous error in there.

I could probably go on with enough time. And sure some of these still qualify as having your "hearing impaired" in some sense (kids in the background etc). But I feel the implication in the phrase was always medical impairment
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Subs > dubs
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