Subtitling (was: Newest natlang?)

> From: dirk.elzinga@GMAIL.COM> > Funny story. I was an exchange student in the
> Netherlands during the school> year 1989-1990, and Nelson Mandela was
> released from prison during this> time. It was major world news, so of course
> the Dutch media outlets sent> representatives there to report on the story.
> As I recall, the Dutch and> Afrikaaners would address each other in their
> respective languages without> any need for interpreters. However, the Dutch
> media had (have?) a policy> that foreign languages must be subtitled on
> television programming, so the> whole exchange was "translated" for the
> audience back home.>
Reminds me of a similar funny story. I was wandering past a store in a local shopping
mall a while ago. This particular store, every time I walked past it, had a
television in operation with captions turned on (apparently so the employees
could watch without necessarily disturbing the browsing customers.)
 
This particular time, the movie playing on the TV was "Passion of the Christ",
filmed entirely in Aramaic and Latin dialogue, and subtitled in English. As
always, the caption feature was turned on, so that the movie was subtitled and
captioned at the same time.
 
I've always wondered whether that was a Captioners' Union rule or somesuch. One
might think captions weren't necessary ...
 
:Chris
 
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