[tryfinally]

Subtitles vs dubs/voiceovers are largely a cultural thing. I envy countries where movies/tv shows are pretty much exclusively subtitled, for example Sweden. Coincidentally, Swedes seem to be really fluent in English on average.

It's a win-win: you absorb languages for free as a child, and you later get to enjoy art in its original unmutilated form.

[BurningFrog]

For countries/language areas with less than 20M people, dubbing isn't economical, so they end up speaking better English.

[inglor_cz]

Czechia is a dubbing stronghold with 10M people. The tradition is just too strong.

[BurningFrog]

Is that tradition from the Communist era?

Those regimes had a... less practical approach to economics, and maybe they didn't want the population to know western languages as well.

[inglor_cz]

The tradition is a bit older.

We also translate a lot of books, even though the profit margins aren't that big.

The main source of government-critical information during the Communist era were the radio transmitters (RFE, Czech broadcast of the BBC, Voice of America) which were hardest to stop. Those stations broadcast in Czech and Slovak. Anything that had to cross a physical customs point (movies, books) was heavily censored.

[thendrill]

"you absorb languages for free as a child"... This is the reason thou.

You call it a win win, government calls it "foreign influence"....