Overcaptioning: On significant vs. superfluous sounds
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Betty Mc responds:
Posted: November 22nd, 2009 at 8:36 am →
I’m deaf. With my hearing aid, I can hear voices and a few background noises, but not understand what people are saying.
Hearing viewers can hear that PA system and understand what is said.
I could hear that voice, but NOT understand what is said without the captions.
Why should someone else decide what is worth captioning and what is not.
In sum, the objection smacks of censorism and paternalism to me.
YOU didn’t like the PA announcement, so you wish it wasn’t captioned. Have you suggested the audio portion be removed too? The producers of the film felt it was important to leave the audio PA in the film.
Sean Zdenek responds:
Posted: November 22nd, 2009 at 11:06 am →
Thanks for your comment. I think the question is whether anything *significant* is gained by including the PA caption in its current form, especially when the PA caption is incomplete (i.e. it’s not clear what activities are not being sponsored, which is confusing and distracting). Remember that captioning is not about providing a description of *all* audio content but only the *significant* audio content. It’s impossible to caption everything. Sound is pervasive and someone needs to make a decision about what to caption. That’s not censorship or paternalism. Those decisions should be driven by the narrative.
The scene is not about a specific PA announcement but a family being reunited at the end of the film. The purpose of the scene should drive decisions about what and how to caption. Call it paternalism if you like but I prefer to call it “attention to the narrative.” Everything can’t be captioned. There are some pretty loud footsteps in that scene, some loud but indistinct chatter, and at least one loud car horn sound. Someone had the good sense not to caption them. Would you prefer to have the caption space at the bottom of your screen filled with descriptions of these sounds too? Probably not. Caption space is limited. Only significant sounds should be captioned. Those footsteps seem to be almost as loud as the PA caption, but volume alone shouldn’t drive caption design. (Stuart’s whisper is captioned, as it should be, because it’s significant to this narrative.) There’s an art involved here, a very limited space for captions, and a narrative that must be honored above all.
Decisions need to be made because every sound can’t be captioned. If it were up to me (and I reserve the right to criticize the producers rather than accept what appears to me to be a poor decision on their part), I would have downplayed the specific language of the PA announcement (e.g. using something like [indistinct announcement over PA], or even [crowd talks indistinctly] at the beginning of the airport scene). Perhaps it would be different if the PA announcement were complete or didn’t disrupt the reunion so dramatically, but instead we’re given (both aurally and in caption form) an incomplete thought that detracts from the emotional intensity of the reunion. The PA caption, if included at all, needs to be backgrounded visually, otherwise it competes with the main narrative. The main point of the announcement is covered aurally by the main narrative and hence not captioned. That’s confusing and distracting.
I’m a hearing viewer and I can’t hear the entire PA announcement (trust me, I tried multiple times). My experience is thus not much different than yours, at least in this one particular instance. The caption and my hearing don’t help me understand the point of the PA announcement any better. So I would disagree with you when you say that hearing viewers can hear that voice. No, we can’t. Not the main point of the announcement anyway, since it’s covered by Stuart saying “Shall we go?” But the more important question is: Does it matter whether anyone can hear or read the entire PA announcement? I don’t think it does. Simply knowing that there’s some background airport noise or an indistinct PA announcement is enough.
I also disagree with your claim that leaving something out is censorship. Countless sounds are left out of every caption file — they have to be left out. There isn’t enough room to include every sound. It’s not censorship but the art of captioning. Someone must make these decisions. Captioning is not objective science. (BTW, it sounds like there’s a foreign language PA at the beginning of that scene. It’s not significant and I’m glad there is no reference to it — even a vague one like [PA announcement] — in the caption file. It’s not censorship to leave it out but an attention to the needs of the narrative.).
The producers may disagree with me here but that doesn’t make them right simply because they are producers and I’m merely commenting on their work.
No one is really talking about caption design in these ways. No one is providing criteria for helping us decide what is significant and what isn’t. I’m trying to work through the question of significance in this post. I’m glad you took the time to respond, even if you disagree. People who use captions need to have more conversations about these issues.
Sean Zdenek
filmore80 responds:
Posted: January 17th, 2010 at 3:26 pm →
I agree with you in that captioning is an art and it is about using good judgment. I remember watching a very emotional scene from some movie and there were captions for various faint background sounds such as a man coughing. It totally ruined the moment. It was distracting. Someone who relies on captions and not hear any of those unimportant background sounds, may think, “Oh, someone is coughing, and they are captioning it, so it must be important.”
Thanks for posting this. Very interesting site.
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