I wrote some time ago about one I noticed on an episode of “The Simpsons”: during the episode where Lisa discovers the pheromonal secret to bullying, she’s about to present her findings to a group of scientists. She points out some of the esteemed minds there, including “the inventor of the walkie-talkie”. On the closed captions, it was changed to “the inventor of the no-spill cup”.
This baffled me for a long time, but I think I finally have the explanation for it: the folks typing in the captions probably presumed that people who would be watching the captions were hearing-impaired or deaf. They must have figured that “walkie-talkie” wouldn’t be very meaningful to that audience.
(okay, that’s a change, not so much an error, but I found it interesting nonetheless.)
Because most people who type closed captioning have the same training as court stenographers, a lot of times they go off of what they hear. This can contribute to the “Osage vs. Old Sage” problem.
Also, I was told by a court stenographer that they use a modified keypad – very few letters on it. Thus, a combination of letters is used for a certain sound, also to denote where in the word this sound comes. Thus: “MOM”
would be decoded as “pl-m-ph”. A single mis-typed key would make the word into gibberish.
Something I’ve also noticed, is that at times the captioning seems to “stick”, and turn into gibberish, then clear itself out further down the road. This makes continuity a problem. I suspect this is due to either the aforementioned mistyped key, or to an overload on the decoder.
Closed captioning data is carried embedded in the video stream of a broadcast. For some reason our engineers are still trying to figure out, the curtains in the White House press room corrupt this data and can produce gibberish CC for white house press conferences.
I LOVE closed captioning! Especially local news–there is very little in common with what the reporter is saying and what gets printed out several seconds later. If court stenos are being used I think it shows some of why the courts in this country are so screwed up.
With The Simpsons, I think what happens is that the captions are created from an earlier generation of the script.
I sometimes give my kids an impromptu Spanish lesson by turning on a Simpsons episode they’ve memorized, the SAP channel in Spanish, and the captions in English. No, it doesn’t work at all.
I really wish the Spanish channels (we have several here) would have closed captions in English or even Spanish so us monoglots can enjoy the programming for more than hot babes and slapstick humor.
More and more of the telenovelas do have closed captioning.
I have it on all the time, it often gets rid of the “hold it, what did he just say?” problem. It makes it much much worse.
With the X-files, almost every time there’s a voiceover, the captioning is wildly different. Earlier version of the script probably. But on a show like that where the writers are trying to hide stuff from the audience, it’s fun to see what they were originally trying to hide and compare it to what they ended up deciding to hide.
I leave my CC on all the time, too, for exactly that reason, amarinth. Much less “What did he say?” going on. I also pay a lot more attention to the TV, compared to about five years ago.
Drives my mom batty, though, whenever she comes over. I have to turn it off.
I keep CC on because I have a bit of a hearing problem, and I used to live in an area where helicopters would buzz by every fifteen minutes or so, rendering me unable to hear a blessed thing on the TV for a full minute.
I can’t imagine watching these shows if the captioning was my only way of “hearing” them, though. Lots and lots of glaring errors. I have to turn the captioning off when they’re captioned live because it bugs me. But on the bright side, some comedy broadcasts include words in the captioning that are bleeped out in the audio.
I love Closed Captioning!! More too, I love letterboxed editions of movies, because I can read the closed captioning without it covering the bottom chunk of the screen. On letterboxed, there is usually enough of the bottom black bar to take care of the two lines of captioning and I don’t miss any of the action.
Now if only I can convince the local sports bars to turn on the closed captioning during the games - most of the restaurants have policies of not turning up the tv volume unless it’s the BIG game. Understandable, otherwise everyone would want THEIR game cranked loud, and with lots of different games and sports in one weekend, it could get confusing. However, I would like to know what’s going on when a racecar crashes, or a player is down on the field, or even on the half-time break commentary.
I use closed captioning whenever possible, since I was born with a severe to profound hearing loss. It’s great, but it isn’t perfect.
Because the closed captioning signal is part of the broadcast transmission, the quality of the captioning will depend on the quality of the reception. If the reception is degraded, the captioning may generate into partial words interspersed with symbols and gibberesh. Or no captions may make it through at all.
Captioning for recorded programs is handled very differently than captioning for live programs. As others have mentioned, captioning for live programs is handled in a manner very similiar to what court stenographers use to transcribe what is heard in a courtroom. Mispellings may be common, but they may not always be because of a lack of English skills on the part of the transcriber. It’s my understanding that the transcription by the captioner isn’t done on a letter by letter basis, but rather phonetically. Interesting words can pop out as a result.
I actually avoid captions while watching sports broadcasts. The captioner is seldom able to keep up with the rapid play-by-play and commentary.
Recorded programs tend to have better captioning, since you can control for and correct mistakes before they are broadcast. However, if there is a lot of dialogue, particularly if it is rapdily spoken, then the captioning may be a little condensed.
Captions for a particular line may remain in a program even after the sound has been edited or re-edited in post-production. I remember more than one episode of The Wonder Years where the captioning for the narration appeared, but no voiceover was present. Subtle changes in dialogue may be caught as well. I remember one episode of Deep Space Nine where Quark referred to the “Tower of Commerce”, but the captioning showed it as “Temple of Commerce.” I could have sworn that I when I rewound the tape and watched that moment again and lip-read Quark, that Quark actually said the word “temple” instead of “tower.”
One of the most interesting captioning quirks I’ve seen was in the movie The Neverending Story. All of the lines that the character of Gmork in the movie were captioned in the color green. This quirk is on the DVD version as well. It remains the only time I’ve ever seen a character’s dialogue captioned in a color other than white.
I am a hearing person but I was given a new TV several years ago by a friend I’d done house-sitting for, for a week.
New sets, under California law, must have closed-captioning.
On World’s Funniest Videos, a show that was sort of a knock-off of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Dave Coulier mentioned a peeing statue in a city in Belgium known as Manikin Pis. The captioning spelled it Manikin Peace.
In the MASH* episode “Snappier Judgment,” where Klinger is court-martialed, the prosecutor uses the legal term res ipsa loquitor, but the captioning spells the first word “Race.”
Perhaps it would be better if those preparing the captioning have the script; I would expect that if the writers of MASH,* etc., are going to use legal terms or other specialized words they would do well to ascertain the proper spelling. In this episode, incidentally, the writer goofed; res ipsa loquitor is a term used in civil cases, not criminal–unless the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or rules for court-martial proceedings, borrowed it.
Technically speaking I don’t use Closed Captioning, because I understand one requires an extra-special groovy decoder to see them. But I always run Teletext subtitles when they’re available, and every DVD with subtitles. Because they’re great. Because I miss stuff (VERY minor hearing problems, combine with MAJOR attention-wandering problem). And when I watched the DVD of A Clockwork Orange I was so glad to have such a beautifully written script appear before me. It really does make a difference.
How much does it actually cost for a decoder? Does it work for life? Will I have to change it every time a new video format comes out?
Thanks to the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990, all televisions 13 inches or larger are required to have closed caption decoder circuitry built into it. The law went into effect on July 1, 1993, so if your TV is more than 8 years old, it is unlikely to have it as a standard feature. However, if it is a relatively new TV, it should have it built in. Check your TV’s manual for details on activating it. Many of the remote controls will include a button on it dedicated to the closed caption function (it might be labeled “CC” or “Captions”).
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Before the aforementioned Act of 1990, I once bought a decoder for about $100 in 1987. Prices may be different now. Stand-alone decoders may be a little harder to find now, since new televisons for the last 8 years have included the decoder circuitry.
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The decoder I purhased in 1987 still works today. It currently resides at my mother’s house, where for a long time the TV did not have built-in decoder circuitry. The decoder still works. No moving parts, and relatively simple construction helps ensure a long lifespan, I’m sure.
By that do you mean DVD? Or HDTV? I doubt the answer to your question is yes. The caption signal itself has been relatively unchanged for a long time, and I’ve heard of no plans to make a radical overhaul of it in the near future. Even when DVDs were released, the closed caption signals encoded on it were just like the ones used for broadcast programs and VHS recordings.
I know this is not GQ, but can someone explain to me the difference between CC1 and CC2? I have both on my on-screen menu, but no explanation in the manual.
Original Telecaption I boxes ARE not compatible with today’s captions.
Being deaf I see a lot of fun stuff. If you search here you should find an old topic of mine, BLEEP (or BEEP?), in reference to why they use that word in the captions.
I saw Pres Reagans son use profanity. Also, an occassional F or S word gets through, which are funny.
These days, try watching FOX daytime news, they have 1. news audio 2. news closed captions 3. subtitled news (not the same stories as the first two) 4. subtitled news under 3, also not the same stories as the first three, On your screen all at the same time!
I hear, but with enough impairment that when I do watch televsion I need the closed captions or I miss much of the show. I notice differences from time to time and some have been funny. I can’t think of any at the moment, but wanted add my “me too”.
I’ve seen movies on Bravo and AMC where they censor them for language only, and must not do a full re-edited version. So the sound is dropped out, but the curses are still in the closed captioning. Good times…
