Ever since I graduated from Northwestern and have watched TV at home, I usually have captions on the TV. Though I am not hard of hearing, there are times where I miss something that the people have said if I don’t have captions on. Plus, sometimes the captions give other commentary. I’ll explain a few in this post.
When I was younger, captions on newscasts and other live programming was fairly useless, as sometimes it would give the useless [ad-libbing] rather than live-transcribing. Of course, I know that live-transcribing is challenging, and I would never be able to do it with my typing speed.
That seems to be quite improved now, as the live transcriptions on captions are usually pretty accurate. Though, currently our Hulu and HBO Max subscriptions sometimes have some formatting errors, especially the latter with cutting off words on a line and replacing it with a double period.
But, what about the title of this post? Obviously, not everything of what I watch is entirely in English.
If it’s a live show, I can understand when the captions read [speaking in foreign language] or [singing in Spanish].
But when it’s taped, or a movie, I feel like it would be a good service to have the translation of foreign or alien language, even if it’s nonessential to understanding the story. I know that in some movies or TV shows, when people are talking quietly, or if there was bad audio on the recording, captions will often appear for everyone (even those who don’t have CC on), and some foreign films have English subtitles for the convenience of English-speakers.
But, consider other movies where characters speak in foreign languages or have foreign-language songs (or parts thereof). One example would be Lilo & Stitch, at the beginning when Experiment 626’s first words are “Meega, nala kweesta!” It causes the council to react badly, and the CC just transliterates his words, rather than translates them as “I want to destroy!” I had to go online to figure out that was the translation, and I feel that some of those translations would be useful in that movie.
Or, in the movie Pocahontas, the captions read [speaking Algonquian] at a few points, although I’m pretty sure (not positive) that the next line that the character speaks is an English translation. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have subtitles for some of the non-English words. Yes, I know that I am probably promoting English supremacy here… but I’d like to brand it as accessibility.
However, there is one notable counterexample, where a song in a foreign language is translated in the activated closed captioning. In the movie Encanto, the song “Colombia, Mi Encanto” is sung in Spanish, but the captions actually translate the song. Although I have forgotten almost all of my Spanish, I remember enough words to see that the captions do indeed translate the song. I like that, because it enhances the story for me.
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Today is the two-hundred-and-seventy-eighth day of The Engagement: that makes thirty-nine weeks and five days. Only sixteen to go!
Never A Worry 