Fun with closed captioning.

Cafe Society
#1

At my gym they have TVs all over the place, to entertain us while we sweat, all muted with closed captioning on. I don’t know who is typing that stuff up as it is spoken but sometimes they type hilarious stuff. For example:

Today a commentator was talking about the Olympics, “from basketball to jew dough.” That one took me a moment to digest.

Last week I saw political ad, not saying who, that ended with “My name is Current Candidate and I approve this mess.” Meaning “message” I hope.

Anybody else entertained by closed captions?

#2

I’ve seen sitcoms where the closed captioner clearly didn’t understand one of the jokes, but I can’t think of an example off the top of my head…

#3

Are those captions typically generated by a live hamster madly typing away, or are they generated by computer voice recognition?

#4

Done by people trained in court reporting machine stenography, but not all may have ironed out all the homophone conflicts that may be in the software, with no time to go back and make manual corrections.

I saw one - “or gas Mick”, instead of “orgasmic”.

“Pointy lips” instead of “point elipse”.

#5

I believe they are done by humans, but phonetically, like court stenography, so that they can be typed quickly enough. Hence screw-ups like “jew dough”.

Edit: ninjaed. Clearly I need coffee more.

PS Another good example, from a restaurant review dictated over the phone to a copytaker: “my newt’s livers” instead of “minute slivers”…

#6

If I heard the story correctly, the most well-known one is probably Family Guy; a closed-captioner (apparently) heard Stewie saying “Laugh and Cry” in the theme song as “Effin’ Cry,” and from that point on, there has been an ongoing argument (even referenced on the show at one point) over what he really said.

The lyric has been re-recorded since then, and everybody involved with the show, including Seth, has said that it was always “laugh & cry,” but this doesn’t stop some people from claiming that “Fox makes him say that, in the same way that they can’t ‘officially’ say that anyone besides Mila Kunis has ever been Meg.”

#7

In a hospital waiting area, the muted flatscreen TV showed a clip of Journey, singing, “The smell of wine and cheaper fume fume fume”

#8

The first season of Mad Men had some doozies. Whoever did them was not very culturally literate. “Fiorello!” was turned into “Theorello”, Bix Biederbeck was re-named “Big Spiderbeck”, a fellow saying “L’chaim” was described as “speaking Jewish”, and a woman on the cover of an Israeli magazine was called a “Jewist” instead of a Jewess. There were plenty more, but those were the best.

#9

Those guys caption “online”. They use lots of shortcuts, so mistakes happen a lot.

I’ve captioned offline for ten years. Those online bastards make more money, but a bathroom break is forbidden, so I’ve got that going for me.

#10

jew doughed.

#11

Yeah, that’s bull. He’s also referred to the previous Meg in interviews, talking about how they stumbled on to Meg. He also pointed out that “effin’ cry” doesn’t make sense in context of the song, which is designed to make Family Guy sound more wholesome than it is.

BTW, my favorite is when the closed captioning tries to censor things that were said directly or vice versa.

#12

I have been watching Daniel Boone on MeTV, and the captioning is sometimes laughable. One howler is when a Native American character is speaking in his tribe’s language and the closed captioning says “Speaking foreign language.” :eek:

#13

I usually make deli rolls for Shabbat each week. I’ve learned a lot about how to properly prepare puff-pastry. Does that make me a jew-dough expert?

#14

Youtube’s closed captioning is beyond hopeless-I mean go and try it. The software literally misses 90% of all the words.

#15

Google Automatic captions in YouTube. They discuss some of the problems there.

#16

Last season on “The Amazing Race” a pair of racers were approaching the Pit Stop and one of them said “I can smell Phil’s cologne from here.” Closed captioning changed “cologne” to “colon”.

#17

I remember watching a tennis match where the last name of Novak Djokovic was rendered as “Joke Witch.” Struck me as funny.

#18

On Law & Order, “class E felony” was captioned as “classy felony” in a couple of episodes.

#19

When the Dallas Cowboys opened their new stadium a few years ago they were having problems with punts sometimes hitting the bottom of the huge video screen. The Cowboys were playing the Tennessee Titans and the announcer said something about “The punt by the Titans hit the bottom of the screen.” The person typing the closed captions didn’t space between “Titans hit” so on the TV it said “Titanshit”.

#20

Some of them are done by my brother, so yeah, hamster.