Do you think a person handles the CC, or a computer?

I don't think it is just British closed captioning. I've noticed discrepancies on things I have watched too.

Well, there's a good question :-) I have no idea but I guess that is possible. If so, their software sound to written text conversion needs some work!!

FWIW, my sister uses closed captioning on everything she watches as she is getting a touch hard of hearing :-) I do not see any of the same sort of errors on any regular US broadcasts when I watch TV with her at her place........nor on the British shows that populate PBS.

There are many regional language differences in Britain and Ireland, involving not just accent but words and word usage too. Some can be very hard to follow and they can be very different from one to another. So, there's not one "British accent", not one common set of British word usage, not a uniform set of British idioms but many dozens of each. Speed of speech also can play a part.

I find when listening to dialog that's not immediately familiar to me, whether British, English spoken by a non-native speaker, or in one of the few other languages I know, turning up the volume louder than normal helps.

My mother has severe hearing loss, and uses closed captioning. I notice some very strange things being depicted for what's actually been said - comical to me but hand that to someone with a little dementia and its something of a circus. She also has a way of inadvertently turning the captioning off, and with her cable, somehow that turns off her caption call phone too and it reverts to only voice.

Which leads me to another place the captioning fails...our phone calls. I can be speaking firmly, loudly, slowly and will still resort to spelling things - the darned phone makes a bit of a joke out of some of my words even with simple sentences, leading to even further confusion. It's wonderful to have, but would be even better if technology could be perfected.

Then they should be relying on UK born people to provide this service, not outsourcing it to someone from Sri Lanka or elsewhere! Although I am not UK born I have no trouble deciphering the dialogue - including any idioms - when I can hear it. And yes, the volume is maxed on both the laptop and the streaming service but it is still faint compared to the TV.

My point is, if they provide this service they should make some effort to make sure it is accurate.

There are wireless headphones that will transmit TV audio, intended for use by folks with diminished hearing. We gave a set (Sennheiser, in case anyone is interested) as a birthday gift and it made a huge difference. TV set audio tends to distort at louder volumes and headphone volume doesn't need to be set so loud.

"I have no trouble deciphering the dialogue - including any idioms - when I can hear it. "

Without extended exposure to each of the many unique extremes - Scouser, Glaswegian, rural Irish, Geordie, Cockney rhyming slang, and so many others, how did you gain such knowledge?

How about exposure? And because of my background and upbringing I am already familiar with a lot of the unique phrasing and idioms anyway. Also obscure or very specific regional dialects are typically toned down for a larger and generalized broadcast audience to begin with.

Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge that someone may have abilities that exceed your own?

I made no mention about what I do or don't understand.

Since you asked, I lived in Europe for multiple years, have traveled all over Britain and Ireland on dozens of trips (many of multiple weeks in length), and had many, many work associates and have numerous current friends with all varieties of accents and local idioms. They're all mostly different from one another. I frequently encounter expressions or pronunciations I don't immediately understand. It's unlikely from your description that your exposure compares to mine but as before, I didn't talk about myself in my earlier comment.

I have an Irish friend whom no one understands. Even his Irish wife complains about him. He's a well educated guy with a dialect and accent from a rural village that's off the chart incomprehensible. They live in a Dublin suburb and he worked in town, so it's not like they were isolated. You're saying you'd understand him with no problem?

Holier than thou ...

... if I heard correctly?

just me

Not at all. I didn't mention what experiences I had. Until I responded to a comment that implied that for the speaker herself. A pot calling a kettle black.

"Why is it so difficult for you to acknowledge that someone may have abilities that exceed your own?

For me, even with imperfections, CC is like getting a big part of my life back. I am grateful for it. I do notice what is being mentioned but the good so far outweighs the bad that it is not a big deal for me.

Dialog lift helps, and so does the Clear Voice feature on the TV.

Other than that, if they can't speak more clearly, I tell them to piss off and choose a different show, series, whatever.

I notice errors when I use the closed captioning on the tv. I also notice that it lags so it’s not synced with the show. However, when I use the cc on Netflix or Amazon Prime videos, its very good. I do need it for the British shows.

I prefer when the closed captioning is taken from the script. It's usually clearer. I think some of the CC must be computer-generated because the mistakes are often one of misunderstanding context and thus, choosing the wrong word.

Oh, excuse me, Elmer!! I should know better than to think that anyone, anywhere might have more familiarity or exposure to any topic beyond what you have. It must be such a burden to have to constantly carry around that weight of superior knowledge and experience!

Fwiw, I have yet to encounter any English speaking person, either face-to-face or on screen, from the UK that I could not understand......if the volume is loud enough for me to hear clearly. That of course excludes Gaelic or Welsh, as those are completely different languages.

I use headphones with my laptop, and that helps me hear it much better.

I started watching RuPaul's Drag Race UK today, and I did try turning on the closed captions, but I found them more distracting than anything. I did not pay attention to whether they were accurate or not, but I decided that I did not like the UK version of this show, probably because I had a difficult time relating to it, and so I stopped watching it. I think I would like an Italian or German version better. I do like British shows like Monty Python and Absolutely Fabulous, however, and I like a lot of British movies, especially the Miss Marple movies with Margaret Rutherford. One British person I cannot stand to listen to is Robin Leach. A friend of mine did the video editing on his last show, and I still did not watch it.

My brother told me that discs of movies that Sony sells in Canada have to be dubbed (or have subtitles) in Quebecois instead of Parisian French, and of course this does not help them sell in Europe. I've noticed that a lot of Fellini movies have inaccurate subtitles, but most frequently they just leave things out because the dialog is going too fast, but then a lot of jokes are missed out on. I went to see Grease in Mérida, Mexico (because I happened to be there when it came out) in English with Spanish subtitles, and the volume of the sound was so low that I ended up having to read a lot of the subtitles - many of which were inaccurate. For example, the sentence at the beginning of a car race, "Haul a$$" was translated "Buena suerte".

lars, I don't know what the percentage breakdown is, but what I've experienced on visits to Quebec and with French Canadians I know here (which includes one neighbor, in fact) suggests that most of them can speak and certainly understand a standard, modern French. Perhaps it's in addition to their dialetic Quebecois they may use with family and friends?. Certainly the more educated and the urban dwelling ones seem to speak standard French, among those I have encountered. (Yes, I speak French well).

On one trip that included a week at a lake in the Laurentian mountains, our younger kids (at the time) made friends with local kids their age also staying at the same place. And so we became acquainted with their parents. These folks spoke only Quebecois and it was a fun experience over several days. They could understand me fine but in the reverse direction, not so much. It was the equivalent in French of talking to someone with a heavy Gomer Pyle accent, and with some similar twang. At least that's how it sounded to my ears.

""I have yet to encounter any English speaking person, either face-to-face or on screen, from the UK that I could not understand."

"I believe you, because you've never been to the British Isles"

And you know this precisely how?? For your information - not that it makes a damn whit of difference to your need to make false assumptions on just about anything - I have visited multiple times! I have family all over the UK (including a cousin who owns a B&B/guest house in the Scottish Highlands). Have not spent all that much time in Ireland but have visited there as well. I would like to see more.

Honestly, I have to wonder why you even bother to post here. You have very little of any value to add to any of the discussions but just seem to take great delight in belittling anything that anyone says that you might not agree with or have some sort of unfounded objection to. Gosh, with ALL that knowledge you have about every single topic that comes up for discussion and the amazingly psychic personal knowledge you have about everyone else's background, education and experience, it's truly a wonder you can't find something more creative and productive to do with your time!

Your comments are not welcome here. Please find someone somewhere else to antagonize.

MY APOLOGY TO GARDENGAL

I misread your original post with the "never stepped foot" comment. I thought that was you speaking of you.

I will go back and retroactively edit my comments that were based on that. My misunderstanding, sorry for the misdirection.

I will still scratch my head about your comment. Whether it's true or ethnic, my best English friends have mentioned difficulty in understanding some Glaswegians and others, as an example. Maybe your ear is better than theirs.

Thank you. I accept your apology.

I am subscribed to a YouTube channel in which the star, Claire Ridgeway, is British. She talks mainly about Tudor History and I love her accent and voice. The YouTube closed captioning absolutely butchers what she is saying. I have no clue how, as I find her very easy to understand. If you were to just read the captions without sound, it would seem like gibberish. I wonder if it relies on some sort of software that is miserably inept to the task, or if its a person that screws it up. I am guessing it is the software, if the talk to text feature on my phone is any indication of the technology involved.

Accents can be hard to understand here at home as well. When my relatives from up North would come visit us here in Alabama they couldn't understand half of what was being said by other people, and those people struggled with the Midwest accent as well. Not just the words themselves but phrases and common sayings went over both sides' heads. Amazing. I myself do not have a specific accent. I was raised here since I was 6 months old,but my parents are both from Wisconsin, and lived there all their lives before moving here. People in Alabama ask me where I am from, since i lack any one of the numerous variations of a southern accent, or a distinct "northern" accent. And I think its funny how despite growing up in the same house, my 5 siblings and I vary on such. I and my oldest brother have no discernible accent. My youngest older brother and the sister closest to me in age have a very pronounced Wisconsin accent, and the remaining 2 have a southern drawl. Fascinating. I wonder what closed captioning would do to our conversations. It would probably give up in frustration.

Because this issue is a current thorn in my side, I've been doing some research :-) According to this TV/media blog, most CC is actually done initially by humans, although a computer is often used as an intermediate step to get the written text on the screen. Apparently speech/voice recognition computer transcriptions of dialogue, used a lot with live TV, is still very inaccurate and not a very effective vehicle for pre-recorded programming like most streaming services and even less so when dealing with a diversity of speech patterns, dialects and accents.

I still don't know if the CC on my streaming services are done by humans or machines. In either case, they are incredibly inaccurate, to the point where they are more a distracting hindrance to enjoying the show rather than a help. I can't help but feel a great deal of sympathy for the hearing impaired, as they do not have the options of turning up the volume or using head phones but have to rely on the garbled printed text to get any sense of what is happening.

Be happy that it was not Welsh.

An idle thought, is CC easier to do in other languages? English has borrowed so many words from other languages that we have all sorts of oddities in spelling and grammar constructions.

Most CC is computer-generated now.

and we all no how gud compouters our ;-)

(actually alot better than 20 years ago when speech recognition was getting started)

"Most CC is computer-generated now."

Not according to what I have read. Computer generated CC is usually restricted to live TV. And most computers can spell simple words correctly. When you see random misspellings of dead common words, that would seem to indicate a human hand involved.....a typo as it were :-)

Computer translation would explain why CC of live TV is *useless*. Are computers translating at the UN??? We should be in the midst of a world war!

I was once working in Kentucky in the mountains and had a new co-worker arrive. She was a Brooklyn Jew who had a dog and needed to rent someplace where she could have a pet. The locals could not understand her and she could not understand them, it was like foreign languages so she took me along to translate. It was pretty funny. I have moved a lot including living in Britain so I have that covered fairly well, have lived in New York, and most southern states. The hardest to understand is usually children. For some reason they usually have the thickest accents. DH has languages and he tells me the CC translations are pretty terrible.

A lot of understanding an accent in a language, whether it's regional or because the person is a non-mother tongue speaker, depends on the listener's prior experiences. A good example, I've heard countless people complain about difficulties understanding call center people in India or the Philippines who work for many mainstream US companies. (I had a tech support session just last week with a Comcast person in India). For me and I'm sure others who live here, because the home region has long had a large presence of both Indian (and Pakistani) and Filipino people whom we have as friends or others we encounter and interact with regularly, there['s no issue. The quirks of word choice and pronunciation are reasonably familiar.

As far as the one to one accuracy of closed captioning, I can't comment (I don't use it) but I see something similar with subtitled foreign language programs. There are a lot of French programs we've enjoyed, all are have been subtitled and not dubbed. Because I listen (and understand) and read at the same time, I can see that many of the translated phrases that find their way into the subtitles are quite funny. I don't expect sentence for sentence equivalency but oftentimes the meaning is changed substantially. Nothing to interrupt the flow but way off all the same. And not only for colloquial or slang phrases, those are to be expected.

Re: Call centers. What would it take to eliminate the sing-song, "Thank you for so patiently waiting," and the endless prattle before the person lets you hang up?

By sing-song, are you referring to their pronunciation or the baloney scripted messages all call center folks are required to say?

I use CC most of the time and nothing bothers me more than when it is not synced with the action on screen. When I watched Survivor years ago, it was painful to try to make any sense of the dialogue on CC while watching the action on screen.

I do not understand why pre-recorded videos, played repeatedly, have had insufficient quality control. Why a person did not review for content. Where is the pride in a job well done? (Writing "jews" for "juice", for instance. Inexcusable!)

Movies on DVD, on the other hand, have excellent captioning. I get mine from the library, and since it is a large county-wide system, the selection is tremendous.