1899 and its wealth of languages
the ship of 1899 has already set sail –what a bad joke– and with it a new attempt by Netflix to turn its product into the star series of the moment. And, hey, it’s not going astray. The fiction created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese is on everyone’s lips, among other things, for the good combination it makes of mystery and science fiction. It also has a rather striking feature: a distribution very choral, with actors from very different backgrounds (does anyone else here remember Sense8?) that throughout the chapters maintain conversations in their original language.
And right there is “the problem”. Many people in Spain usually see the foreign series dubbed into Spanish, something that although it should never be an impediment -we are going to put aside the eternal debate of “folded yes or folded no”-, in the case of this series in particular it can be an obstacle to fully enjoy it. And it is that part of the identity of this proposal is its plurality, the result of the fact that the plot takes place on a passenger ship en route from Europe to the United States. There are characters speaking in English, German, Spanish… and there are also special situations where the language barrier influences when they relate to each other. All of this adds value to the series itself and the cast (the idiom It is one of the things that defines us the most, in the way we are, express ourselves bodily and behave) that you will not understand if you see it dubbed into Spanish.
Its own creators -remember, are the same ones who gave life to the famous mystery series Dark– They pointed it out like this in a recent interview with cosmopolitan, where they talked about how the cast managed to film without understanding each other at times: «They didn’t really understand each other. That was the beauty of it. It was so easy for them to just react… […] That was the goal of the series. We can see that even if you don’t really understand what words are being spoken, you do understand what the other person is trying to communicate. You know it from the emotional state, how they address you, their body language and everything. You know if something is urgent or not important«.
For this reason, the recommendation in these cases is that you watch the series in the original version with subtitles. In this way, you will have a very different perspective of how the dynamics in the series take place.
How to activate Spanish subtitles on Netflix
Putting the subtitles on Netflix is a very simple task, but in case you always see everything doubled and don’t know how to do it, we indicate it below Step by Step:
- Go to the chapter 1899 what you want to see and press play.
- In the lower right corner select the icon of the speech bubble.
- Look in the left column, under “Audio”, select “English [V.O.])”.
- In the right column, called “Subtitles”, select “Spanish”.
- Done, you already have it configured.
If you are not used to reading subtitles, don’t worry: the first few times it will cost you a bit (you will feel that you don’t have time to read and see what is happening), but you will see how it takes a few chapters to start feeling comfortable. Who knows, maybe you’ll get into it and never see anything dubbed again!
