‘Those subtitles,” said my dad with feeling as the credits rolled, “were the best I’ve ever seen.” How my kids laughed at his funny old ways. The film my family was watching, since you ask, was To Kill a Mockingbird. I’m not sure what the subtitler got so right; I must go back and check. I must also ask the kids what tickled them, when the research suggests that kids use subtitles more than their elders. My two certainly do. “Why’s that?” I asked them. Shrug. “Dunno. Easier, I suppose.”
I am glad about this. Anything for a connection between me and them, for some sense that we people the same universe, when so much of what they bang on about is baffling. Much better: “Subtitles please, Father,” than: “Get those bloody words off the screen!”
