Cute - Can't Hear You!smashing the gender binary (with a fork!) ([personal profile] angelikitten) wrote,
@ 2009-11-16 16:42:00
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Current mood: annoyed
Entry tags:can't hear you!

Some days, I really hate TV...

Seriously, is it really that hard to get subtitles right?

I don't know if it's a fault with the people who code the subtitles, the broadcaster, or the digital TV company, but having subtitles just show up for a fraction of a second (barely long enough to notice, nevermind read) isn't actually useful. If it happens on a big programme (it's happened on both Merlin and Doctor Who this week, for example), it's nearly always sorted by the time the programme gets repeated (normally less than a week later), so I have no idea where the problem actually is.

(This happened loads with last night's Doctor Who special - so much so that I ended up making up my own story. It was probably pretty similar to the actual story, but with much more swearing and a rendition of Craig David's "Walking Away".)

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[personal profile] red_trillium
2009-11-17 08:14 am UTC (link)
Bummer, you would think that after how long knowledge about different disability issues (particularly hearing ones) have been around that people doing subtitles would really have sorted problems like how fast they go. I guess though the blame partly goes to the people who produce the shows, they go for quick-fire dialogue and action but that's not easy for subtitles or even for people with only slight hearing loss to follow. :(

Or maybe the subtitle issue the first time around is something about how the subtitlers work???

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Cute - Can't Hear You!

[personal profile] angelikitten
2009-11-17 09:55 am UTC (link)
The thing is, it doesn't matter how quick the dialogue is - the subtitle can be gone before the speaker has said the first word, and nothing shows up while they say the rest of the line/sentence/whatever. I'm a fast reader, but I'm not that good.

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[personal profile] red_trillium
2009-11-18 08:47 am UTC (link)
Bummer, sounds like the wankers at the subtitle department aren't getting it right then.

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[personal profile] fairbreeze
2009-11-19 06:58 am UTC (link)
For live shows, don't they have someone typing in what's being said, court-reporter style? I've seen some interesting typos/timing issues with live shows, I know.

Is it possible (totally stupid, but possible) that they're having someone type things in for the first time at the same time you're seeing the show-- and then they have time to fix all of it later, which is why the reruns don't have issues?

Totally just out on a limb guessing there, though. I don't really even know how the whole thing works.

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Cute - angelikitten

[personal profile] angelikitten
2009-11-19 08:47 am UTC (link)
Considering how in-advance these shows are filmed, it's not all that likely. If it were being done live-style (as you described) then I'd totally understand, and spelling mistakes happen, and so on... But when lines are on screen for less than a second (making them impossible to read) even though the speaker makes the line last 5 seconds (and it's always gone before they've finished speaking, or sometimes before they even start), something has gone badly wrong.

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