A sociology paper on japanese subtitling practices.
Yuki Watanabe: JAPANESE PEOPLE WATCHING SUBTITLED JAPANESE- LANGUAGE TV SHOWS: FUNCTION OR AESTHETIC?
Starting in the 1980s, entertainment television programs such as variety shows, reality shows, and talk shows increasingly featured ostensibly non-professionals, as opposed to professionally trained actors and entertainers.2 This trend intensified significantly due to increasing budget constraints imposed on the television industry after the onset of Japan’s economic depression in the early 1990s. In broadcasting, professional performers, of course, work for guaranteed wages stipulated by industry and union agreements. In contrast, there is no minimum pay for non-professionals. Indeed, many non-professionals, lured by the prospect of their “fifteen minutes of fame,” are happy to appear on TV without financial compensation. Thus, it makes business sense for television producers to use as many non-professionals as possible. Significantly, there are only a few professionals whose star power is sufficiently strong enough to guarantee consistently high viewership and ratings. This, in turn, has helped create a talent market of non-professionals groomed and used and promoted as overnight sensations. Such nonprofessionals are essentially disposable.
The Netflix series “Clarkson’s Farm” follows former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson as he struggles with his second career, farming. He has a bucolic farm in Chadlington in the Cotswolds, and one of his farmhands is a lifelong local, Gerald Cooper. He’s a very nice 74 year old gaffer, but his West Country accent is so thick that literally nobody on the show can understand a word he’s saying (the farm manager sort of gets by, but neither Jeremy, his girlfriend, nor the local land agent can make out a thing.) The producers can’t even subtitle him.
When he speaks, everyone listens and agrees or laughs appropriately, but they have almost no idea what he’s said. This has led to a few incidents where Gerald advised Jeremy on some farming procedure, which Jeremy then mucked up because he didn’t actually understand the advice he’d agreed to.
Even news programs with professional anchors will put in subtitles when discussing difficult topics or using difficult words that people are more likely to have seen in writing than heard spoken.
Because the kanji are often not linked to the pronunciation of the word, there are a lot of words that people can read and understand without knowing how to say.
