Sir, - On Monday, December 27th, I sat down with my brother to watch the screening of Saturday Night Fever on RTE, making use of the Aertel subtitles as my brother is deaf.
As fans of the film will know, the dialogue features plenty of what may be called "colourful" language, reflecting the New York vernacular of the late 1970s. Before long, however, we noticed that certain four-letter words, which were totally "unbleeped" in the soundtrack, were either completely omitted in the subtitles or else replaced by sanitised versions. At one point, a whole passage of risque dance-floor dialogue was left out, leaving a glaring gap in the subtitles. The result, although sometimes hilarious, utterly misrepresented the atmosphere of what is quite a gritty and hard-hitting film.
I realise that subtitles must convey the essence of film dialogue in a confined space, and that this necessarily means that some parts must be left out or summarised. However, the subtitling was quite imaginative elsewhere in the film and this was clearly not the reason for the omission of certain words and phrases. I also understand that RTE may have bought in the subtitles rather than producing them in-house, but surely they ought to have been reviewed before they were broadcast, if only to check their quality?
I would prefer not to believe that RTE could endorse such blatant censorship for a particular section of the audience, when clearly hearing viewers are considered responsible enough to listen to the film without being hopelessly corrupted. As in most cases where censorship works most effectively, subtitles are aimed at an audience that is not usually in a position to know when the material presented has been altered.
Subtitles ought to accurately represent broadcast material, so that deaf and hearing viewers alike are permitted to decide for themselves whether to keep viewing or not. It would be interesting to know RTE has a policy on this matter. - Yours, etc., Anne Cradden,
May Street, Drumcondra, Dublin 3.