Thursday, June 15, 2017

Hawaiian Subtitles: Why?


I never really paid much attention before, but for some reason I recently noticed that Hawaiian Airlines' preflight safety video not only has subtitles in English, it also has Hawaiian translations.

Immediately, the only thing that came to mind was one word: Why?

Other than paying homage to, and showing respect for, the native Hawaiian language, what useful purpose do Hawaiian-language translations accomplish? I'm sure at least 99.9% of their passengers don't understand the language (I know I don't).

Most just listen to the dialog on the screen. Or they don't. And if they can't speak English, they can understand what to do just by watching the video.

To my way of thinking, if Hawaiian Airlines wants to use foreign language subtitles, they should use Spanish ... or Japanese.

And that's all I have to say about that. Or, A i ka pau aʻu i, e olelo aku no ia.

No comments: