5 ms·

It makes me curious about how human subtitlers or even scriptwriters choose to transcribe intentionally ambiguous speech, puns and narratively important mishear

It makes me curious about how human subtitlers or even scriptwriters choose to transcribe intentionally ambiguous speech, puns and narratively important mishearings. It's like you need to subtitle what is heard not what is said. Do those born profoundly deaf specifically study word sounds in order to understand/create puns, rhymes and such so they don't need assistance understanding narrative mishearings? It must feel like a form of abstract mathematics without the experiential component... but then I suspect mathematicians manufacture an experiential phenomena with their abstractions with their claims of a beauty like music... hmm!

dylan604 1y ago
I had similar thoughts when reading Huck Finn. It's not just phonetically spelled, it's much different. Almost like Twain came up with a list of words, and then had a bunch of 2nd graders tell him the spelling of words they had seen. I guess at some point, you just get good at bad spelling?
- spauldo 1y ago
  Writing in the vernacular, I believe it's called. I do something like that if I'm texting. The book "Feersum Endjinn" by Iain M. Banks uses something like this for one of its characters to quite good effect.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Except it forces me to slow down to "decypher" the text and makes the reading labored. I understand the point as it is part of the character, but it is easier to understand someone speaking in that vernacular vs reading the forced misspellings. I definitely don't want to get to the point of being good at reading it though. I wonder if this is how second grade teachers feel reading the class' schoolwork?
    - spauldo 1y ago
      That's true. I'm sure Twain and Banks were aware of this, though. Apparently they considered the immersion to be worth a little extra work on the part of the reader. Whether the reader agrees is a different story. I try to limit my use of it to just enough for my accent and way of talking to bleed through. I don't go for full-on phonetics, but I'm often "droppin' my g's and usin' lotsa regional sayin's." It probably helps that the people I text have the same accent I do, though.
0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
The quality of subtitles implies that almost no effort is being put into their creation. Watch even a high budget movie/TV show and be aghast at how frequently they diverge.
- smallpipe 1y ago
  A good subtitle isn't a perfect copy of what was said.
  - herbcso 1y ago
    Tom Scott would agree with you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9sHwNKc2c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9sHwNKc2c
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    Hard disagree. When I'm reading a transcript, I want word-for-word what the people said, not a creative edit. I want the speakers' voice, not the transcriptionist's. And when I'm watching subtitles in my own language (say because I want the volume low so I'm not disturbing others), I hate when the words I see don't match the words I hear. It's the quickest way I can imagine to get sucked out of the content and into awareness of the delivery of the content.
    - stavros 1y ago
      But then what about deliberate mishearings and ambiguous speech, like the GP said?
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      I mean, subtitles are mostly the same. Sometimes they're edited down simply for space, because there wouldn't be time to easily read all the dialog otherwise. And sometimes repetition of words or phrases is removed, because it's clearer, and the emphasis is obvious from watching the moving image. And filler words like "uh" or "um" generally aren't included unless they were in the original script. Most interestingly, swearing is sometimes toned down, just by skipping it -- removing an f-word in a sentence or similar. Not out of any kind of puritanism, but because swear words genuinely come across as more powerful in print than they do in speech. What sounds right when spoken can sometimes look like too much in print. Subtitles are an art. Determining when to best time them, how to split up long sentences, how to handle different speakers, how to handle repetition, how to handle limited space. I used to want subtitles that were perfectly faithful to what was spoken. Then I actually got involved in making subtitles at one point, and was very surprised to discover that perfectly faithful subtitles didn't actually do the best job of communicating meaning. Fictional subtitles aren't court transcripts. They serve the purpose of storytelling, which is the combination of a visible moving image full of emotion and action, and the subtitles. Their interplay is complex.

dylan604 1y ago

I had similar thoughts when reading Huck Finn. It's not just phonetically spelled, it's much different. Almost like Twain came up with a list of words, and then had a bunch of 2nd graders tell him the spelling of words they had seen. I guess at some point, you just get good at bad spelling?

spauldo 1y ago
Writing in the vernacular, I believe it's called. I do something like that if I'm texting. The book "Feersum Endjinn" by Iain M. Banks uses something like this for one of its characters to quite good effect.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Except it forces me to slow down to "decypher" the text and makes the reading labored. I understand the point as it is part of the character, but it is easier to understand someone speaking in that vernacular vs reading the forced misspellings. I definitely don't want to get to the point of being good at reading it though. I wonder if this is how second grade teachers feel reading the class' schoolwork?
  - spauldo 1y ago
    That's true. I'm sure Twain and Banks were aware of this, though. Apparently they considered the immersion to be worth a little extra work on the part of the reader. Whether the reader agrees is a different story. I try to limit my use of it to just enough for my accent and way of talking to bleed through. I don't go for full-on phonetics, but I'm often "droppin' my g's and usin' lotsa regional sayin's." It probably helps that the people I text have the same accent I do, though.

0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago

The quality of subtitles implies that almost no effort is being put into their creation. Watch even a high budget movie/TV show and be aghast at how frequently they diverge.

smallpipe 1y ago
A good subtitle isn't a perfect copy of what was said.
- herbcso 1y ago
  Tom Scott would agree with you. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9sHwNKc2c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9sHwNKc2c
- kstrauser 1y ago
  Hard disagree. When I'm reading a transcript, I want word-for-word what the people said, not a creative edit. I want the speakers' voice, not the transcriptionist's. And when I'm watching subtitles in my own language (say because I want the volume low so I'm not disturbing others), I hate when the words I see don't match the words I hear. It's the quickest way I can imagine to get sucked out of the content and into awareness of the delivery of the content.
  - stavros 1y ago
    But then what about deliberate mishearings and ambiguous speech, like the GP said?
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    I mean, subtitles are mostly the same. Sometimes they're edited down simply for space, because there wouldn't be time to easily read all the dialog otherwise. And sometimes repetition of words or phrases is removed, because it's clearer, and the emphasis is obvious from watching the moving image. And filler words like "uh" or "um" generally aren't included unless they were in the original script. Most interestingly, swearing is sometimes toned down, just by skipping it -- removing an f-word in a sentence or similar. Not out of any kind of puritanism, but because swear words genuinely come across as more powerful in print than they do in speech. What sounds right when spoken can sometimes look like too much in print. Subtitles are an art. Determining when to best time them, how to split up long sentences, how to handle different speakers, how to handle repetition, how to handle limited space. I used to want subtitles that were perfectly faithful to what was spoken. Then I actually got involved in making subtitles at one point, and was very surprised to discover that perfectly faithful subtitles didn't actually do the best job of communicating meaning. Fictional subtitles aren't court transcripts. They serve the purpose of storytelling, which is the combination of a visible moving image full of emotion and action, and the subtitles. Their interplay is complex.