I’m fine with foreign language content in general, as long as it’s categorized as such. The problem is how Netflix mixes it in with everything else in a deceptive manor.
What is foreign language for such a global service?
If I am in Spain, should shows in English be bundled in a "Foreign Language" along with Korean dramas, Japanese animation, and a couple of odd series in Dutch? How is this helpful?
Not saying that language categorization is a bad thing. Being able to filter shows that are available in a specific audio language, or with a specific language available for subtitles, would be a bad thing. But I seriously question the helpfulness of "English" and "Other"
I think the right approach would be to label content that is not in the source language you have set as your device locale.
It’s not about filtering out the content, it’s about making it easy to tell whether or not it’s going to start playing with dubbed audio so the viewer can make a better choice.
Locales are often compromises that don't reflect user preferences particularly well. People speak multiple languages, and they may have different preferences for content / UI languages, date/time formats etc. And the preferences may be situational, such as native X > native English > English translation/localization > X translation/localization.
Just tag the content with the relevant languages and let the user create filters based on them. And assume that the user understands that languages don't form disjoint categories, because the content itself could be multilingual.
Besides, original audio with subtitles is usually superior to dubbed audio.
Hollywood is not in the source language for most of the world. Netflix brand new English content is also not in the source language for most of the world.
Netflix started as English only and already has regional content. It would make since for foreign to be considered “not the dominant language in this region/nstion”
If I am in Spain, should shows in English be bundled in a "Foreign Language" along with Korean dramas, Japanese animation, and a couple of odd series in Dutch? How is this helpful?
Not saying that language categorization is a bad thing. Being able to filter shows that are available in a specific audio language, or with a specific language available for subtitles, would be a bad thing. But I seriously question the helpfulness of "English" and "Other"