What's it called when a title has "or" in it followed by a different title? (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Lafari@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Examples:

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (the book)

And before you say "alternate title", since these supposed alternate titles are included in the full version of the main title (even if it's usually not listed in full), how does this differ from "true" alternate titles that replace the entire main title?

Example:

Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey vs Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn

Into the Deep vs Yakamoz S-245

And then there's the standard sub-titles, for example:

Captain America: The First Avenger

(Sorry for my lazy title choices but I couldn't think of any others)

It seems like we have 3 things here: an "or" title in the name (alternate title which is included in the full version of the main title), a completely different alternate title that replaces the main one, and a subtitle following a colon after the main title. Are there different names to distinguish these different types of titles??

Also can we talk about how sub-title is used to mean closed captions as well as "sub-name" (sub-title used in this context)? It makes it impossible to search about because most people understand subtitle to mean closed captions, I think.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

They used to be transmitted over a hidden portion of the screen, during the NTSC and PAL era. That was topologically on the signal stream area corresponding to right under the video frame. Thus they were titles (text) that were under (sub) the image. They were also unavailable (closed) to the user until they activated them, when the decoder started drawing them over the frame by folding the signal so the text could appear. They originally were invented for and proposed to aid hearing impaired people by capturing the sound events, including speech, with short descriptive texts (captioning) .

That's why in the US Closed Captioning is for hard hearing, and subtitling usually means only dialogue and other languages. While the rest of the world only uses variations of the word subtitling because English rapes and coopts everything it colonizes.

this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024

80 points (93.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26749 readers

460 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.