Where do you get this impression? I've lived in France my whole life and most people I know try to avoid subtitles as much as possible. Most of the foreign TV contents are dubbed anyway, except on a few channels (Arte).

This may be less true for the new generation accustomed to watching subtitled TV shows on the internet, instead of waiting for a few years to get them in French on TV.

This.

I grew up in Belgium, and there were two versions of films on - V.O. (Version Originale) which had two sets of subtitles (Flemish and French) and V.F. (Version Francaise).

The cinema usually had far more Flemish speaking people in the VO screenings than French speaking, so I assume they went to the VF ones.

This is definitely changing, but slowly, yes.

I think that this is at least partially attributable to the average understanding of English in those countries. When you are watching a movie with subtitles, but have absolutely no idea what is being said in the movie because the spoken language is unknown to you, it can be very distracting, because you are missing a certain amount of context. I believe an above-average amount of Dutch people is at least capable of comprehending basic English speech, which puts the movie's subtitles into context. In countries where English isn't as wide-spread, this is more problematic, which is why dubbing is more effective there. Similarly, even in the Netherlands movies which target family audiences are often shown dubbed by default in movie theatres, because the subtitles are just not as effective even if the children that are watching the movie can read them.

I'd guess it's the opposite: average understanding of english is lower _because_ the content is all translated.

Also, I do not know about germany/france/spain, but italian movies have basically always been dubbed, in the sense that italian actors were dubbed by other italian actors.

For Italians it is easy explained: our average level of foreign languages' knowledge is ridiculous and if a movie is broadcasted in Original Version most of the people will not understand a bit.. Things are improving with newer generations (e.g. various MTV sort-of shows are subtitled - in Italian) but it will take time, and I'm not sure we will be ever be at the same level of Northern countries..

On the other hand I could say that many Italian dubbers are very good compared to other countries (sometimes they are italian actors as well)

As a general rule the more speakers a language has the higher the chance of mostly dubbed content. High quality dubs are not cheap and it's easier to finance it when your target language has a 100 million speaker instead of just 5 million.

That's why Germany, France and Spain like to dubs, but not smaller countries like the Netherlands or Scandinavian countries. And medium sized countries like Poland often have really crappy dubs (sometimes one speaker for all characters).

It's true. Kids also learn to read subtitles at an early age (by the time they get 7 most can read subtitles). But Disney doesn't seem to understand: it dubs programs in Dutch, and you get Hanna Montana and others dubbed with an awful (to my Flemish ears) Dutch accent.

The majority of English TV on French national tv is most definitely dubbed. As far as I know it's only the Dutch. Don't know about Scandinavia and Eastern Europe though.

In Scandinavia it's all subtitles.

In the UK, foreign-language dramas and films are always subtitled.

Foreign language dramas are not common on British TV, but then a few years ago, the BBC broadcast the original Danish version of The Killing which gained a cult following. Since then we've had a whole raft of foreign-language dramas (mostly crime dramas, a lot of them Scandinavian).

I personally much prefer subtitles to dubbing. With dubbing, you get the distracting mismatch between the actors mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue. Plus, the dubbed language will have a different tone and inflection from the original language. At least if you watch with subtitles, the fluency of the dialogue (even when you don't understand it) will feel much more natural.

Yes. Anglo-Saxon culture has permeated Scandinavian culture to a degree you don't find in Western Europe (which also means that most of the population is fluent in spoken English, which is definitely not the case in France, Germany or Spain). You don't find dubbed movies here, unless they are targeted at children.

Here in Portugal we mostly subtitle as well, even though our population is definitively not fluent in English. On the other hand, the older population watches disproportionately fewer shows in English, preferring national daytime talkshows and soap operas (national and imported from Brazil), so dubbing would probably be too expensive per watcher.