For example, the actor in the movie just said “I’ve been saying that”, and the caption said “I’ve said that”. Do the transcribers have access to the screenplay, and use that as a starting point?
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Captions are not transcriptions.
The goal of TV captions is to help hearing-impaired people follow the story. In order to do that, they have to convey the meaning of what is being said, but they also need to be readable. That’s why they often shorten sentences, change grammar, or even leave out false starts and other parts of natural speech.
The goal of a transcript is to codify word-by-word what is being said. That’s important if you’re a researcher, or a journalist, or a law enforcement officer. But it’s not necessary when watching TV shows in noisy environments.
>For example, the actor in the movie just said “I’ve been saying that”, and the caption said “I’ve said that”. Do the transcribers have access to the screenplay, and use that as a starting point?
Keeping in mind that transcription is a very time-consuming process, what do you think is easier:
1. Transcribing each and every localized audio track individually.
2. Transcribing exactly *one* audio track and then simply *translating* that without consulting the other tracks.
Sometimes writing out the dialogue verbatim would take up too much of the screen. Rewording it can be just as effective as relating what’s going on, even if it has to take out some adjectives and shorten phrases.
[Tom Scott has a great video about this, and more, about dubbing versus captions.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9sHwNKc2c)
Basically, especially with older TV, pausing wasn’t really a thing. You had to get the meaning as a deaf or hard of hearing individual the first time through. They only have so much space on the screen that they can use for captioning, and if there’s fast speech, they need to keep up. That may be hard for people trying to read along during a quick scene. So it’s not uncommon to simplify the language to fit on the screen and fit on the screen for the amount of time that they have to display it.
Captions have become more true to the spoken word in the age of pausing.
Sometimes it’s shortened if the line is said quickly which wouldn’t be able to be read in time, sometimes they just get it wrong, and I assume sometimes they have access to the script and go off that and sometimes the actor said the line slightly wrong and it wasn’t caught. Nowadays likely auto-captions are used in some instances as a starting point.
Most people can talk and listen faster than they can read, so captions often shorten what’s said to be readable in real time. Also, less complex grammar is easier to read faster.
In some cases, captions leave out words or concepts that may be offensive or misunderstood; this is especially likely when content produced for one culture is captioned for another. (I once watched a movie captioned in multiple languages I understood; different things were left out in different languages.)
I believe some captioning/subtitling is done based on a copy of the script, but in actual performance the actors may change a few words. I’ve also seen some where whole responses, whole lines, are omitted in the audio, but the captioning is still there.
Aren’t most captions coming from the production house, based off the actual scripts and dialogue. I don’t think anyone is actually listening and taking notes in 2024. Unless is pirated/bootleg or something old.
An episode of The Simpsons where Homer was driving with a bucket on his head said ‘stupid car’ but the CC said stupid Ford.
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