30, studio bosses were faced with a limited  amount of sound equipment and qualified sound technicians, causing  them innumerable headaches over which productions to produce as  talkies vs. silents. Also, silents were internationally marketable  via cheap title card translations while talkies, prior to the advent  of subtitles, usually required completely different foreign language  versions to be produced simultaneously. Low budget producers of  westerns along poverty row were especially impacted, with silents  continuing in that market through the end of 1930.