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Non-English Language DVD’s

Bob Molyneux, Dr. Data, has also done an interesting dip into the NDP database.
He asked the question – “What foreign (created first in non-English languages) movies circulate best?“.
He discovered that by far the best circulating foreign movies, primarily in non-English languages were what we loosely term ‘art’ or ‘genre’ films.
No way of knowing for sure but it gives us pause. Two things that come to mind:
1. Art films are circulating to English speaking users who are reading the subtitled versions as most DVD’s released in North America have closed captioning in many languages and/or are dubbed.
2. Our English DVD collections are cicrulating to many people who speak English as a second or third language. They can then use the dubbed or subtitled options. Again, I have been told by many people who needed to learn English they use the English version to improve their English speaking skills.
Either way this seems to imply an underused marketing option for many underserved aspect of our communities with our DVD collections since DVD’s have so many more options and features than the traditional videotape versions. I’ll have to look at a few MARC records in our OPACs and see if we’re covering all of the language and ADA options that are available now.
Stephen

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Posted on: December 16, 2005, 10:43 am Category: Uncategorized

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  1. Well, you might be able to look at the MARC records to see if they include all those options, but then the next question is — does your OPAC allow you to search or limit by all those options? Just take language for example — most OPACs base their language limiter on 008 — the original language of the material. But now that multiple audio and subtitle options are so common on DVDs, when patrons are browsing for a movie they’re probably more interested in knowing whether the movie offers subtitles or audio in their language (MARC 041), as opposed to caring what the original language of the film is. But how many of us are offering searching or limiting based on 041? More thoughts about the matter over at the Gordian Knot: http://www.gordian-knot.org/index.php/2005/12/19/multi-language-dvds-in-the-catalog/

  2. now days it is neccassary to speak english fluently.