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Closed-Caption Cover-Up
Sometimes my role as a Luddite assists in my more prominent role as defender of the underdog. In this instance, the underdogs in question are users of television's closed-captioning feature. (This group consists of the hearing impaired, viewers of any BBC series, and hammered fans in loud sports bars.)
I was watching a VHS tape of the final episode of the sadly ignored sitcom, Andy Barker, P.I. No, I don't have TiVo or DVR. Yes, I could've watched the episode ("The Lady Varnishes") online, but since a friend had been kind enough to record it for me, I felt obliged to watch the tape.
Unfortunately, my friend is even more technologically inept than me, and the recording's sound quality was dreadful. More than once, I had to revert to those trusty closed captions to catch a particularly garbled word.
Imagine my shock, then, when reviewing a scene in subtitle mode, to read that the background music was Def Leppard's "Photograph." Any student of mid-80's top-40 hard rock—and I include myself in these shameful ranks—could instantly recognize the actual audio, "Rock You Like a Hurricane" by Scorpions.
Oh, sure, maybe the episode was submitted for captioning before the music had been switched. Or maybe that caption guy just likes to sneak in the word "def" as often as possible. Well, let it be known: I'm watching you, caption guy. And I'm watching you with the captions on.
Posted by Jack Silbert on 04/23/2007 | Permalink
Comments
I sent this to a friend of mine, who transcribes closed captions (can you say "closes captions"?) for a living.
He wrote me back:
"I'll bet they did change the music after it had been captioned, those fucks.
They made my brethren look bad."
Posted by: Damian | Apr 23, 2007 12:24:24 PM
I always watch TV with the caption on, and for whatever reason song credits are wrong as often as they are right. What's really annoying is that cursing is usually edited for captioning. Recent switch-up: when a character said "small penis" the captioner turned it into "small peanut."
Posted by: Bennett | Apr 23, 2007 1:00:42 PM
We always watch TV with the captions too. Once you get used to it, it's amazingly helpful with getting characters' quickly-mumbled names, which is very nice for large casts and historical dramas. It's fun looking for the times when the captions and audio don't match--a last-minute change in dialogue or score might in itself be telling.
Downside, sometimes the captions spoil the effect of good comic timing.
Posted by: Penn | Apr 23, 2007 1:49:41 PM
It's also nice for non-native English speakers. In Mexico, it's usually the default setting for watching pirate satellite-TV.
Posted by: iván s. | Apr 29, 2007 6:30:49 PM
I used to subtitle television, and I know that some TV companies supply tapes to the subtitle companies at ridiculously short notice. Hence some pretty appalling subtitles.
My wife is Japanese so we watch TV with English subtitles to make it easier for her, as and when subtitles are available. BBC News in the UK has speech recognition software. I think it must be called Gobbledegook, because that is what you often see on screen. I think I may take a few photographs of common BBC News subtitles and put them on my Flickr account, to show just how godawful they can be.
Posted by: Marc | Apr 30, 2007 3:48:24 PM
