They do provide closed captions however, so that we get helpful captions such as "loud urinating sounds".
They do provide closed captions however, so that we get helpful captions such as "loud urinating sounds".
Netflix can provide both English subtitles and closed captions (as seen in some Korean shows). They simply choose not to offer them for most English-language titles.
I honestly thing that they’re created by third parties who just run the audio through an AI and call it a day.
Languages are handled differently in truly multi-lingual media. Watch _Invasion_ for a good example (the first season is amazing, but we didn't care for the second). There, the audience gets subtitles for everything, so viewers often know more than the characters do. There's a beautiful sequence in the desert where two men, unable to understand each other's language, pour out their hearts to each other, and - unwittingly, and across a cultural chasm - share the same hopes and fears.
There's a third way of handling language, which I hardly ever see: the characters on-screen understand each other, but the audience doesn't. The _Star Wars_ by-play between R2-D2 and C3PO is the most accessible example. This is engaging because viewers have to fill in the blanks to infer what one or more of the characters have said.
You might prefer that everything be of the second type, but keep an open mind! The creators probably had a reason for making the choice that they did.
They aren't complaining about closed captions failing to translate foreign speech.
They're complaining about the specific instance where the show/movie has English subtitles for that foreign speech already built in and showing on the screen, and when the closed captions show "[speaking Japanese]" it overlays the translation that the filmmakers intended the viewers to receive, preventing them from experiencing the filmmaker's artistic choice.
For a particular example, it is my understanding that the movie "The Thing" is thoroughly spoiled right at the beginning if you speak Norwegian.
Captions aim to describe to the deaf and hard of hearing all significant audio content—spoken dialogue and non-speech information such as the identity of speakers and, occasionally, their manner of speaking—along with any significant music or sound effects using words or symbols."
Personally I always use subtitles, and closed captions if it's available; there are quite a lot of audio clues that I wouldn't otherwise know are even interesting, that get highlighted - mostly extra detail rather than plot important, but it does key you up to things happening or about to happen in the background.