According to a KUTV 2 News report: “Decisions about general conference proceedings rest with the First Presidency who have decided that all talks for this weekend’s sessions will be given in English,” Hawkins said in a statement to 2News.
Previously, speakers at conference have had the option of giving talks in their native language with a translator reading the talk for English audiences.
No further explanation was given about the First Presidency’s decision.
When they did this a couple conferences ago, I thought it was very cool for the speaker, but the way they had the English dubbed over the top, I found made the talk difficult to follow. I would have preferred subtitles. I’ll bet they got complaints about it, so decided to go back to how it was before.
I agree with Katherine – I had been looking forward to hearing their native languages and expecting to read subtitles, and was disappointed to hear the English translation instead of the speaker. Maybe the subtitles are harder to accomplish since they need to translate into so many languages.