[stefs]

subtitles usage has been a bit problematic for me too. i'm hearing impaired and my mothers tongue is german; i can read english almost as well as german, but spoken language is and always will be a problem (i get parts of it but not everything, even in german). my friends all prefer OV, so when i watch movies with them, i usually want english audio and english subtitles, because the dialogue and subtitles indeed differ A LOT between different languages (e.g. they use different numbers, the audio track says it's 2.2 miles away, while the subtitles say it's 1.8 kilometers away, which is incredibly distracting and immersion-breaking). if i remember correctly, german audio tracks and german subtitles of english movies also differ regularly (my guess is that they're translated independently).

the problem with netflix in a german speaking country: they indeed offered original language audio tracks, but subtitles were often german only, which made the experience unbearable (my guess is that, as always, international licensing is to blame). either we turned off the subtitles, which hurt the experience for me, or watched the movie in german with german subtitles, which hurt the experience for them (and for me).

afaik netflix improved this a lot in recent times - there are a lot more english subtitles available. other than that piracy is the only option for an enjoyable movie experience with guests.

[devnonymous]

I stopped using both Netflix and Amazon Prime here in Germany because of the messed up subtitles. I do not speak German so I used to opt for the OV versions but whenever there were non-English dialogues in the video (Spanish in Mad Men, Morzart in the jungle, better call Saul... Etc) the subtitles would be in German, which for me meant not understanding anything that was being said!

It's frustrating. Here I am willing to actually give them money so that I get essentially what I could with popcorn time!

[corecoder]

Here in Italy Netflix there are a lot of english subtitles available—except when they are really needed: I watched Misfits in english without subtitles and it took a lot to start to understand what they say.