Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me you appear to be arguing something along the lines of “this show is improvised, like a 1940s live radio production, so any closed captioning would have to be done live like a court stenographer.” Which is retarded.
This show was completed probably over a year ago. Maybe longer. Certainly months ago. There’s been months and months of time for people to nail down exactly what was said, and transcribe it to perfections. You make it seem like it being ad-libbed forever ago somehow affects the correctness of the current CC.
Like, you see how this makes no sense, right? You could ad lib a paragraph 2 minutes ago and I can listen to the recording of it and transcribe it perfectly, verbatim.
hajario said the closed captioning for the show would be accurate because it’s scripted. But a significant portion of the show is not scripted. It’s improvised. Even lines that are scripted might be changed on the fly while recording. Those changes won’t be in the script, so a closed caption taken from the script will not match the actual dialogue. Maybe, they go back and rewrite the script so it matches the recorded audio and they give that to whoever does the closed captioning for the show. My understanding is that that would be pretty rare, and that closed captioning is usually done as an afterthought, and often farmed out to third party contractors. The industry standard for closed captioning in general is poor enough that I wouldn’t automatically assume that they’re authoritative. Which, to be clear, is not the same as saying they are never correct, or that its impossible that I misheard. It just means I don’t think the question is settled by looking at the closed captioning.
Ok. It’s extraordinarily far-fetched to think that somewhere between a rough draft and a final transcript no one would be able to verbatim nail down what was said, regardless of which parts were previously ad lib. We are talking about months or years of time to solidify verbatim. At some point it’s “what was said” concretely regardless of it being ad libbed on the spot ten or fifteen months ago. But it’s a point you refuse to conceded, no matter how ridiculous, and somehow you’re a mod so yeah. If you can cite a ton of Netflix bad CC probably this show is all wrong 100% CC. Certainly your position isn’t in bad faith. Really weird hill to die on. But here we are.
I have CC enabled as a default, and it has errors all the time - even for scripted network shows. I’d love to believe that show producers would take it as a professional responsibility to make sure that CC is correct, but I don’t see any sign that the correctness of CC is anyone’s priority: The Sorry State of Closed Captioning - The Atlantic
This entire conversation is predicated on the assertion that Jerry says “Akita” instead of referring to the frequently called back, on-screen Chryon news-reel banner that said “Akira.” It’s established that they refer to an “Akira type situation” and in the in-cartoon chyron they spell out “akira.” But somehow, regardless of what we hear, what the screen says IN THE SHOW and what the closed captioning said, it’s somehow more plausible the guy who said he heard “akita” is probably more correct based on the inconsistency of CC, and because Miller once saw bad CC in a live debate.
I’m just being clear that’s the debate–that PROBABLY we should believe what someone thinks they heard over all other available evidence because sometimes CC gets it wrong. That’s the debate.
Straightdope is always somewhere to come to get a 40 odd post argument about the accuracy of subtitles, rather than anything about an episode of a show. I remember the same during every Game of Thrones episode thread. Sarcasm->Such a joy.
The Smith residence is ostensibly somewhere in the Seattle metro area (possibly in Kirkland, for that matter), near Costco’s home base of Issaquah, so it’s a nice bit of cheap heat as well.
Fine. My position is that CC is no evidence either way - if the CC said “akita” I’d think that was a typo, rather than a deliberate attempt to represent a different pronunciation by Jerry’s voice actor. Can anyone provide a clip of the scene, so I can hear again this vital moment?
You can watch the whole episode on adultswim.com, in the USA at least. I just checked, the CC says “akira”, but IMHO Jerry clearly said “Turning our son into an akita?”
