Positioning and styling captions when speakers overlap and interrupt each other
It can be challenging to caption scenes with multiple speakers. Bottom-center caption placement is far from ideal for readers when it fails to clarify which captions belong to which speaker. Adding to the difficulty: speakers often talk quickly, interrupt each other, and overlap their speech to show collaborative support. When captions are placed underneath or next to each speaker, readers can more quickly distinguish — at a glance — who is speaking.
Screen placement is a core standard of caption quality. The FCC’s (2014) new rules for “closed captioning quality standards for TV programs” require that captions should be Accurate, Synchronous, Complete, and Properly Placed. Regarding placement: “Captions should not block other important visual content on the screen, overlap one another, or run off the edge of the video screen” (FCC).
Contagion (2011), which we rented from Amazon Prime Video recently, provides quite a few examples of captions covering on-screen text. Because the on-screen text is low on the screen, and the captions are set exclusively in the bottom-center (default location), the captions partially cover this text at times. Whether the captions cover words on the screen depends on the device being used to view the movie and the caption size set by the user. I prefer large captions when watching programs on a large-screen television. Large captions are more likely to cover any low-set text.
But the topic of placement goes beyond making sure that titles, names, chyrons, and other on-screen text are not obscured by the captions. Caption placement can help readers identify who is speaking when when multiple speakers are talking, interrupting, or overlapping their speech turns:
When people onscreen speak simultaneously, place the captions underneath the speakers. If this is not possible due to the length of the caption or interference with onscreen graphics, caption each speaker at different timecodes. Do not use other speaker identification techniques, such as hyphens. (The Captioning Key)
Bottom-center captions can interfere with readers’ attempts to associate lines of captioned dialogue with their respective speakers. In this scene from Contagion (original captions), Jude Law argues with a newspaper editor about the need to cover a developing story: