The thing that amuses me as an Australian is the subtitles when a pom, Irish, or Scot is talking. I've not seen it with Australians, but I wouldn't be surprised
I had to read your comment twice, I first mis-read "pom" as being a badly kermed [1] "porn", which made the entire thing hard to parse.
Then I realized I wasn't sure what "pom" means (not a native speaker, and from the northern hemisphere) either, so had to look it up [2]: "(Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, mildly derogatory slang) An Englishman; a Briton; a person of British descent". It's more of the rhyming slang, didn't know that was a thing for Australian slang.
As an Aussie, that c-word thing isn't really a thing in my experience, at least not in the urban environments I inhabit. (It may be a thing in the bush.)
We tend to be "direct" and generally have no fear of speaking truth to authority: the whole "OMG we can't indict the former President" issue with Trump is confusing down here: politicians and people in positions of responsibility are held to a HIGHER standard of behaviour, not lower, and they'd be the first to be tapped on the shoulder (or we expect them to be, and would be asking why they haven't been yet).
Here in America they will often subtitle Asians speaking English. As someone with an Asian wife and kids I can never figure out if I should laugh or cry or both.
For those coming into this discussion late with no personal exposure to American television, the OP's use of "often" is just them burning some steam off. This is not a serious thing that happens in any kind of high percentage of content. I can't think of any content where it does happen and would be surprised if any examples created in the last 20 years could be found.
It just happened with a movie in the last year. An Asian person speaking English with a Mandarin accent was subtitled. If I could remember the name I'd link it to you. Maybe you just aren't watching content with diverse casts that speak with accents.
Convenient that you don't have any examples of your point whatsoever and just lean into a thinly veiled insult to try and cover that up. The point stands, this content is by no means ubiquitous or even remotely close to frequent enough for your use of 'often' to be correct with even a charitable interpretation.
I haven’t noticed many subtitles on TV in the US. But I remember watching Trainspotting with a college flat mate. He had no idea what was being said; as a Scot, I had to translate for him.
Among my friends and family, only the really thick UK accents aren’t understood very well. Glaswegian, Scouse, etc. The more common (on TV) RP, upper class Edinburg, and Highland accents are mostly fine.
The subtitles made me roar with laughter when I first saw Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come. The whole movie is in Jamaican patois, so there's some logic in translating it; but most urbanites here have plenty of exposure to Jamaican patois, so it's a bit like having English subtitles on an English movie.
