Today in the news, a Turkish actor is currently the hit of cinemas (sorry cannot remember the name :P) but the movie is not so well accepted by Germans here. One of the reason given was it is a nuisance to read the subtitle. Unlike most movies for German consumption this movie was not translated to German. So if you want to watch this movie you have to watch it in Turkish and read the translation in German. Of course the German speaking community in Europe is big. In fact someone did explain (sorry no source) at the time after second world war (or was it first), German lost to English as International language just by a few votes. Therefore, most of the movies be it English, Japanese, Mandarin, Bollywood etc movies are all translated to German before being released here. We will have delay in movie premier if the translation is not yet finish... nope they will not kick off with the original English language movie before the German translation is ready. Therefore, I think the German audience are pretty pampered in term of language selections for movie.

I attended a workshop few days ago. One of the topic that was shortly discussed was improving university student's English standards. Unlike their counterparts in northern Europe, e.g. Sweden, Norway, Finnland, Denmark, Holland etc, university students in Germany are not well versed in English. I can be a witness to this point because at least my students (the cream of the class) in third semester have difficulties understanding the few English slides that I prepared. Some of them even complained in the evaluation form that they find it dumb "doof und blöd" to have English slides. However, students in later semesters (semester 5 and onwards) are expected to understand English eventhough there is no English course in their syllabus. I am also pretty puzzled by this expectations. They are perhaps expected to improve their English at their own expense and initiative. Anyway, back to the problem statement - I realised the northern Europe countries eventhough they have their own language, they do not translates the movies (because their community/audience are smaller). Movies will be watched in original language and someone I came across in Finnland said she learnt her English by watching TVs and movies. They read the sub title, understands the story line, and try to catch the humor in its very own culture.

Therefore, in order to improve students (or Germans in general) English, I propose to watch English speaking movie in English instead of translating it to German. For those who finds reading sub title as annoying - it is all back to getting use to it.