TV or not TV? The impact of subtitling on English skills

English is the language of the globalized world, and the lingua franca for the international communities in, among others, science, business, finance, advertising, tourism, and technology. Sixty-eight percent of citizens in the EU rate English as the most useful foreign language – far above the second position of French with 25% (European Commission, 2006). Not surprisingly, English is the most widely learned foreign language, and this trend is expected to continue growing fast in the coming decades (Graddol, 2006). Graddol (1997) estimates that about one billion people are currently learning English worldwide, with 200 million in China alone. More than 80% of the EU’s school students learn English. The duration of foreign language as a compulsory subject ranges between six and 13 years in the non-English-speaking EU (Eurydice, 2005).

The general message in this study is simple. Continuous exposure to English-language media contents help people learn English and, thus, the citizens of countries where foreign films and programs are shown in their original version in television will likely speak, on average, better English than those that live in countries where television is dubbed. This is relevant because previous studies have shown that better English language skills improve economic performance. 

Dubbing countries in our sample invest the same in education as the subtitling countries. Yet subtitling countries score 3.4 points higher in the TOEFL exams. We show that the television translation methods can explain part of the skills gap. We identify a subtitling effect equivalent to 16.9% of the overall TOEFL score. We also analyze the differential impact of subtitling by type of English skill (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). We find that the strongest effect is for listening (19.4%). 

Our results are robust to the inclusion of other determinants of language skill including language proximity, demographic indicators and proxies for the quality of the education system. Interestingly, the choice of translation technology at the time of sound cinema diffusion did (could) not take into account the benefits of improved English skills. In fact, subtitling may have appeared undesirable at first because it forced audiences to read, but it turned out to be beneficial ex-post in terms of English proficiency (and audiences got used to subtitling). This paper thus shows that how countries adopt foreign “cultural” products matters in the long term.

Excerpts from: A. Rupérez Micola, A. Aparicio Fenoll and A. Banal-Estañol et al., TV or not TV? The impact of subtitling on English skills, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2018.12.019
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