I am able to follow an American movie by just listening to it, but if I do turn on the subtitles, I get a lot more out of it! I need to spend less of my brain capacity interpreting the foreign language and can use more of it for understanding the social context shown in the film. Or the scenery. I understand more meanings and can read better between the lines when I can see a decent translation into my mother tongue in the subtitles.

But also: Netflix and one of the Finnish TV stations save extremely much in their translations. That means the translations often contain gross errors or leave things outright untranslated. Even then the subtitles often help, because if my understanding of what was said and what I can read in the translation are about the same, then everything is probably fine.

In any case: My English is not all that bad, as you can see, but I still turn the subtitles on whenever I can, and I am much less interested in watching a foreign film without them.

I am largely unable to enjoy song’s lyrics in English if I cannot read them at the same time. In song lyrics the difference is much more noticeable than in movies. I can get about 75 % of the enjoyment of a movie even without subtitles, but lyrics in songs almost become just another musical instrument if I cannot have the lyrics in text format to follow while listening to a song in a foreign language.

Also, if I try to write something beautiful, it is usually best that I write it in Finnish and then translate it into English, because I can express myself so very much better in Finnish than in English! Takes more than twice the time compared to just outright writing the text in English, but the plot of a story becomes much better if I’ve written it down in my mother tongue. There will be more nuances in the people’s behaviour, and that translates into a more interesting text overall. Even after translation.