Subtitles evolution

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise to anyone that I used to watch (English) movies with Czech subtitles.

About two years ago I found out that it was a really bad idea. Apart from the subtitles stealing my time because I had to read them, they also stole my brain cycles as I couldn’t avoid comparing what I heard in the English original to the Czech translation, looking for what I missed and what I’d translate better. While this might have been a good exercise as far as translation skills are concerned, it made me tired rather quickly. Plus I usually had no idea what the movie was about.

So I switched to English subtitles. That was a great improvement. No more time spent translating everything both ways three times. I could finally enjoy movies again. But still, I couldn’t help but read the subtitles anyway, just because they were there.

And so it happened that I almost stopped using subtitles for English movies alltogether. I still occasionally use subtitles for special things such as Monty Python, where there are a lot of jokes and puns which would be difficult for me to catch otherwise.