DVD producers want to end providing English subtitles

Petitionsonline ^ | 11/12/03 | Amanda Masterman

[Fearless Flyers]

http://www.petitiononline.com/amandam/petition.html

All DVD producers,

We the undersigned are asking you the producers of DVDs to continue to include English subtitles on your DVDs.

The D(d)eaf community rely upon subtitles to follow the dialogue in a film. If you have ever tried watching a film with the sound off, you will realise that it is impossible to fully understand what is going on when you can not hear what the characters are saying. DVD is the first medium to give D(d)eaf people equal access to the film industry and many D(d)eaf people have invested in DVD players in order to take advantage of this.

Please understand the importance of subtitles to the D(d)eaf community and continue to put English subtitles on the DVD's you produce.

Sincerely,

[Fearless Flyers]

Looks to me the media is trying to find a way to pass off the Ronald Reagan mini series as factual history, by turning off the dialogue and selling it to the Deaf Community in order to recoup their losses.

[goldstategop]

As someone hard of hearing, it pisses me off royally Hollyweird is too cheap to subtitle the supplemental disc on their DVD packages. Not all of us can pick up every word and I resent being made to pay for the assumption I can hear just like every one else.

[Fearless Flyers]

The subtitles also help when one's partner gets bored. One doesn't get distracted by the sound coming from the tv she's watching while your trying to complete the task.

[StatesEnemy]

What the hell is up with: D(d)eaf?

[Fearless Flyers]

I didn’t write the petition but it shouldn’t take much thought to figure out the “D” is a metaphorical symbol used to represent how the digital technology of the DVD is a benefit to the Deaf Community.

[Nataku X]

I signed, but do you have a source as to where it says that Hollywood is eschewing English subtitles?

[StatesEnemy]

it shouldn’t take much thought to figure out the “D” is a metaphorical symbol used to represent how the digital technology of the DVD is a benefit to the Deaf Community.

Ohh of course... that's obvious

[SamAdams76]

One doesn't need to be deaf or hard-of-hearing to benefit from subtitles. I get up at 5AM and workout on my treadmill. I like to watch DVDs when I am doing this. So that I don't have to have the volume on loud and wake up the rest of the house, I put on the subtitles and can do my workout without making a big racket. I find them very useful for those situations.

[Nataku X]

Or, it could be that, deaf refers to the individual disability and Deaf refers to the collective community. e.g., deaf person versus a Deaf party, makes things a little easier to sort out. That is the context I have seen it in the most.

[Fearless Flyers]

Thanks for signing, my Ma, baby sister, nieces and nephew will appreciate it.

I had trouble finding a source too, but after thinking it over it wasn't hard to believe that they were considering removing the English subtitles. Even if they aren't now the petition would be useful to end the thought before it springs up.

I'm pretty sure it's a real threat though, knowing the community, they don't take action and receive such a response unless there is good reason.

[birdsman]

Nakatu X got it right. people in the Deaf Culture consider themselves to be a community. They consider "deaf" to be as inappropiate as "american" or "christian".

[Fearless Flyers]

"Ohh of course... that's obvious"

Metaphors are not supposed to be obvious; they are used to for force the readers to think for themselves so they can form their own opinions.

But of course, they can also be used to expose idiot elites who like to piss and moan about other's thoughts when they have nothing to offer.

[StatesEnemy]

Well excccuuuuuuuuse ME!

I thought that perhaps that was some weird, politically correct spelling - like womyn.

[pdunkin]

Hey! That's my wife you're talking about there!

[Nataku X]

I think Fearless Flyer took your answer to be much more negatively sarcastic than it actually was. But, no, it's not a PC spelling.

If you go to a Deaf event you can be reasonably sure that the activities will be centered around visual games and sign language. However not all people who are deaf know sign language, etc. Even then, sign language grammar ranges from being word-for-word precise English to a grammar optimized to visual sign language (I think of it as big-D Deaf grammar). FF could also be right with her metaphor.

So I guess to clarify you could say that Deaf refers to the community and cultural characterstics associated with it (such as the optimized grammar I mentioned above). And deaf refers to the state of not being able to hear... a hard distinction to make, to be sure, but it is NOT "PC". In fact the PC term is to say "audiologically impaired" or some such bull.

[Fearless Flyers]

You can be assured, as long as men still have sports scores and stats to run through our minds we still have them beat. Our methods will never be as obvious.

[weegee]

I don't understand this. Under President Clinton we had it mandated that our new tvs must include closed captioning technology. Then comes along DVD which contains removable subtitles in multiple languages and they don't want to offer English subtitles anymore (nor closed captioning).

[cgk]

Or grrrrrl

Ugh.

[July 4th]

If you've ever watched the movie "Bloody Sunday," you'll know that it's in English, but you need the subtitles. The accents are far too thick for American ears.

[ccmay]

people in the Deaf Culture consider themselves to be a community

I have read that a salient feature of the Deaf community, male and female alike, is their inordinate fondness for drink, drugs and promiscuous sexual pleasure. Supposedly a lot of deaf people routinely participate in drunken Deaf-only orgies.

Feel free to correct me if this is a scurrilous rumor.

-ccm