The Commission is planning to launch a study in the next few months to assess the potential of subtitling in film and television programmes to encourage foreign language learning and improve the mastery of those languages.
The report will, among other things, present the state of play of existing practices in Europe with regard to subtitling and dubbing as well as analyse the impact on people’s ability to speak foreign languages. Likewise, the report should determine if the use of subtitles can be a catalyst to language learning and which social groups appear to be the most concerned. It will also assess the impact of subtitling on the integration of migrants or identify the barriers to the use of subtitling (psychological, economical, etc.).
The final study should recommend actions for new measures to be taken at Community level to support subtitling and to promote multilingualism through the media.
The initiative is based on the 2003 Action Plan “Promoting Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity – an action plan 2004-2006”, which proposed three broad categories of actions and namely building a “language-friendly” environment in Europe that is favourable to languages by embracing linguistic diversity, building language-friendly communities, and making language learning easier. The Plan suggested the idea that “the use of subtitles in film and television can encourage and facilitate language learning.”
This research would complement a previous Commission study which assessed the effect of dubbing and subtitling on the circulation of European works on the international market.
The Commission expects this new study to provide a concrete input to its policy on multilingualism, and the report should be available at the end of 2010.