Why do U.S. audiences struggle with subtitles?
Surely that is the only explanation for why the U.S. tend to 'translate' foreign shows by completely re-writing them. When Disney bought Studio Ghibli they gave their films awful dubbing using U.S. actors, while the stellar Danish drama Forbrydelsen was butchered by AMC in their re-make.
I am not suggesting that everyone should learn Japanese or Danish to appreciate these shows. Instead, we should just get used to reading subtitles and leaving the show intact. It is our own intellectual blind-spot when we do not understand these languages and the integrity of the piece should not be threatened to mitigate this.
It is far more rare to translate a film from the U.S. to another culture and that is surely because other cultures understand how embedded these pieces are with their places of origin.
U.S. television executives should just learn to read and stop destroying foreign cultural pieces.
-The English Student
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