Tg4

Hagar

For a start I'm not a fluent speaker but I'm a fairly fluent listener. Does that make sense ? So go mo leith sceil all round for not attempting this as gaeilge.

I have mixed feeling over the use of "embedded" English subtitles on some of the programs. I can read the subtitles long before the words are spoken by the actors. So I don't pay enough attention then to the spoken Irish.
I know some programs have subtitles on teletext 888 if they are not fixed onscreen so I have a choice there. What would be nice is to use 888 to provide a couple of blackout lines to mask the "embedded" subtitles for people who don't want to see them. Then everyone has a choice.

My Irish will never improve if I'm being force-fed English subtitles.

*Sinéad*

see i get both side sof this. It's annoying when the subtitles are up, but then some people don't have teletext or are barely able to use a remote never mind the text. What gets me is there should be at least the option for irish subtitles, especially for foreign features.

uch

Hagar wrote:

What would be nice is to use 888 to provide a couple of blackout lines to mask the "embedded" subtitles for people who don't want to see them. Then everyone has a choice.

My Irish will never improve if I'm being force-fed English subtitles.

Tá mó Votá le Hagar,
What hope have people who needs the experience when the english is there, even when you try not to read it you can't help it, then you try and translate the english to Gaeilge and this slows you down even further.

Gael

I was at a talk once hosted by Pádraic Ó Ciardha who is the Leas-Cheannasai of TG4.
Someone asked him a question about this very subject.

He said that they have the unsolicited subtitles, because market research had told them that 20% of Irish televisions still don't have teletext. So it was felt that they would be alienating twenty percent of their potential audience by not having the subtitle facility for them.

You can understand the logic of it, especially when TG4 have so much to prove to their critics in terms of atrracting viewers but at the same time, it seems like a case of trying to please everyone and ending up pleasing no one.

Pádraic also said that people he knew personally who had good Irish and were annoyed by the subtitles, cover over the bottom of the screen with a piece of paper to cover them up in the form of what he described as a "chastity belt"

Yoda

It would be useful for many learners for one of the teletext streams (889 or something) to subtitle the Irish dialogue in Irish.