Dear Deaf in America – Captioning Technology
Ben | December 21, 2008Dear fellow Deafies,
I have more American contributions to this blog than any other country – and I’d very much value your input.
Take this picture:
Does the caption in the photo above make any sense? (No, it does not!)
I have 21 further photos and videos showing more poor captioning (we call it subtitling in the UK) in the space of just 15 minutes in this prime-time Saturday evening programme. (Click on the links to see them.)
I’ve had the good fortune to use captioning services from America at work, where I am constantly in awe of the accuracy and speed of it even with a heavy usage of technology jargon. Here’s a video that I hope gives America some idea of how unbearably slow and vague the captioning is in the UK in comparison:
My question to my friends in America: is it possible for the accuracy and speed to be improved significantly?
My hope is that your answer is a resounding yes, and, even better, for you to point to references of how this is achieved, in order to demonstrate to the Brits including Deaf consumers, policy makers and regulators, that the poor quality of subtitling in the UK is a) unacceptable, and b) not a technology limitation.
I congratulate the same people on achieving a 100% subtitling rate however, given choice, I would seriously be happy to reduce the coverage and invest the the money saved to improve subtitling quality.
To the UK, am I the only one with this view?
I think that the re-speak method seems to fail miserably
Karen | December 21, 2008I think that the re-speak method seems to fail miserably when there are words that are phonetically the same, or similar, in English – and there are many! I understand that pre-entered words can be entered in preparation for the type of programme that is to be on – eg they can programme the computer to type “Sullivan” instead of “Sully van” if there is a snooker match on – don’t quote me on this though!
Is it easier to train people to re-speak than it is to train people to become palantypists? I wonder what the turnover of staff is and if there is in-house training – do these broadcasting companies offer further training to constantly improve subtitling services though employees Personal Development plans?
There has been recent discussion about live shows and the acceptance that there will be some errors in subtitles/captioning – but those errors should surely be corrected when the show is re-aired and shown again at a later time/date – or when it is put onto the internet for viewing.
With deaf people having to pay 100% TV licence fees in the UK, there is surely some legal stand that can be made to negotiate paying the full licence fee depending on the accuracy of the subtitles!? A penny knocked off for every subtitling mistake!? The BBC would soon sort it out if there were possible financial losses.
I hope people keep up the with the many petitions and campaigns that are ongoing in the deaf community. There are many sites supporting different issues that need resolving. If only Gordon Brown would sit for an evening, watching his favourite programme (and some live ones) with headphones on and relying solely on the subtitles… I wonder if he would think that deaf people get value for money then on a par with hearing people?
Karen
@Karen, a while back I thought the problems you listed
Ben | December 21, 2008@Karen, a while back I thought the problems you listed were hard to solve – until I tried captioning services (CaptionFirst) from the US. I was astounded at the speed of the captioning, my BSL interpreter checked and confirmed that it captured 100% of what was being said (including fast flowing group discussions) with very nearly 100% accuracy – all live too. Really, you need to see it to believe
In this case, rather than a machine, a typist does
Bill | December 21, 2008In this case, rather than a machine, a typist does the captioning, and types 250 words per minute!
http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/exclusives/61733/Closed-Captioning-Stunt.html
I think they only use the re-speak method for live
Piers Kittel | February 20, 2009I think they only use the re-speak method for live subtitles, where it’s near impossible to get typing speed up to speaking speed, or too expensive to. When watching pre-recorded subs, quite often subtitles show stuff that we won’t know until 5 mins later, such as names.
At least we get colour subtitles – in the US, they got black & white subtitles like DVDs – you know that you actually can get colour subtitles on DVDs. I know it sounds silly, but colour subs make it a little easier to figure out who’s speaking what. I remember in the past, they used to assign a colour to each person, but they don’t do that any more.
I have to admit that when I watch with subtitling
Andrew Ferrier | June 22, 2009I have to admit that when I watch with subtitling on (more often than you might think, hotel bars for example), the output is generally pretty garbled. I can understand the issue with live television, but the example of HIGNFY is inexcusable – it’s offline, so there is plenty of time to do it right.