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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

It bothers me to no end that audio tracks and subtitles aren't available globally on Netflix. I live in the Netherlands but my kids are half Danish. It's difficult to keep them exposed to Danish when not in Denmark.

Netflix has nearly all children's cartoons dubbed in both Dutch and Danish but we can't access the Danish audio tracks from the Netherlands.

I had really hoped that a global service like Netflix would allow global access to languages. I understand that show/movie licensing is per country, but subtitles and audio tracks? why? :-(

IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet. Taking an IP-based guess, sure, many websites do that too. But at least most websites allow you to pick a different language if you wish. Netflix, not so much.

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IMHO, this whole idea of "you live in $COUNTRY so you only get to communicate in $MAIN_LANGUAGE_OF_COUNTRY" doesn't belong on the internet.

As a Belgian, I can assure you the majority of the internet does not even get that part right. I get websites in the wrong language all the time.

PSA: The majority language in Belgium is not French.

Yeah, the weirdest thing is that HTTP Accept-Language has been around for decades and is usually configured correctly (to the OS system language). No idea why people use geolocation for language at all, on the web.

Localization is easy with javascript. Just look at navigator.language or navigator.languages[0]

And I suggest following gettext's lead in this regard, so that on your code you would have something like:

i18nstrings = {'My string':<?= _('My string') ?>, 'Second string':<?= _('Second string') ?>};

then you can just do stuff like elem.innerHTML = i18nstrings['My string'];

Of course, you process the language header in the backend.

I reviewed a couple of i18n libraries for javascript but ended up liking this approach more. It was simple and effective.

People in English-speaking countries are really bad at thinking about localisation since they're not exposed to these issues personally.

Better hope the Chinese don't take over our economy any time soon, I'm sure their devs have the same view on this.

Yep, this. As a Flemish Belgian (Dutch is my first language) it's a bit annoying that Netflix in general doesn't publish anything in Belgium if there are not at least Dutch or French subtitles available. It's a good thing the original audio tracks are almost always available, but just how limited the selection is just because of their subtitle requirement is sad.

The younger generation here really doesn't mind watching originally English content in English, with English subtitles (or just no subtitles at all). Even content that isn't originally English, I'd be fine having audio in the original language and English subtitles. But Netflix won't do that.

If they loosened their language restrictions a bit I am sure I would get sooooo much more content...

I suppose this is because they are afraid to upset certain segments of their users. In the German Netflix you'll often see angry comments in the review section of any show that isn't completely dubbed. Maybe they could avoid this by having a separate "original language only" section.

Or just having it as an optional language setting.

It's nice that they're applying pressure for content producers to comply with various disability discrimination laws and supply subtitles.

> PSA: The majority language in Belgium is not French.

In my experience it doesn't work either way, french-speaking walloons get dutch, vlaming get french, and I assume german-speaking walloons get danish or icelandic just to fuck with them, possibly Schwiizertüütsch to taunt them.

I'm sorry that this is not constructive:

> In my experience it doesn't work either way, french-speaking walloons get dutch, vlaming get french, and I assume german-speaking walloons get danish or icelandic just to fuck with them, possibly Schwiizertüütsch to taunt them.

But these words are better than faux IKEA names.

If that amuses you it gets even better if you replace the leftover translated names by the "original" version:

> In my experience it doesn't work either way, français-speaking wallons get vlaams, vlaming get français, and I assume deutschsprachige gemeinschaft get dansk or íslenska just to fuck with them, possibly schwiizertüütsch to taunt them.

Wow, that's a shame.

I was a Netflix subscriber before but got tired of seasons of shows inexplicably disappearing when watching them, and I just finished reading the article ending on this note:

> What Netflix has made clear is that it’s no longer content with signing up content to show only in select markets, it’s instead focusing on deals that can be shown in every country.

Which made me very happy, only to come on here and see your comment. I hope they fix this.

I've been a Spotify subscriber since 2010, and a user since 2008. I don't get my music anywhere else because there's simply _enough_ on there. This is what I want from a TV(/movie) service.

While I'm a bit miffed they seem to be going away from acquiring other content (which I still want access to), at least their direction of global availability is sound.

Sad to hear about audio tracks and subs though. That's inexcusable.

In Germany the Netflix app shows different available audio tracks and subtitles depending on the user profile language, at least for the "Netflix Originals". Have you tried setting the language of the kids profile to Danish (via the "Manage profiles" screen in the Netflix web app)?

I just tried that, but can't seem to see any changes. Thanks for the hint though!

I just tried this again on the German Netflix website: Danish was listed and selectable for the audio track and subtitle of "Troll hunters" and "Tarzan and Jane" after switching the Kids profile language to Danish, but not when the profile language was set to German or English.

I was baffled when I realized in Netflix Spain most shows and movies only offer spanish subtitles, and not [CC] subtitles in their original language.

Same problem here in Italy, most movies (even American ones) does not have english subtitles, but only italian ones.

There's a workaround it you use Chrome, you can install SuperNetflix [1] and then import your own custom made subtitles [2]

[1] - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/super-netflix/aioe...

[2] - http://subflicks.com/

And I would like an option for no subtitles on english-speaking movies/shows. As I am making demands, I would love english subtitles on english-speaking movies/shows too. It is a great to practice english as a second language

There was a Chinese blog site I wanted to get sheet music from, but the blog host used IP to figure out I wasn't in China and just sent a page saying a translation wasn't available and redirected to the front page. I tried accept-language headers and everything but they insisted that I couldn't read the sheet music.

That's why it's always good to have several VPNs with different locations.

Did you try a Googlebot or Baidubot user-agent?

Presumably they didn't want to attract the attention of the international copyright police.

It seems that you need a VPN. Best way to bypass stupid restrictions like that.

Of course, the downside is that you will probably have to get two accounts so that you can still get stuff in Dutch. I was doing this stuff while in China, still a bit slow but doable.

I used to do this, a Netflix account is global. Meaning that the selection you get is based on where you currently are, this is great for when you're traveling.

Netflix has however been blocking every VPN under the sun. You can try your luck and get a VPN with a static IP that's just for you... But they seem to have started blocking these too.

Furthermore people don't mind paying for Netflix since you get a ton of value from it. When you add in the cost of a vpn + static IP from that VPN provider you've more than doubled it.

I cancelled my subscription when I couldn't hop to different countries and could only use the Belgian selection. I just went back to doing what I did before I got Netflix.

Isn't this often a rightsholder issue? They don't want to undercut some market so they only license the content for a specific language and forbid subtitles.

International IP law is a morass of conflicting interests and market protectionism.

Same here, I'm looking for a movie or a series that I can watch in english but have subtitles in Romanian. If you know any...

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