Interesting Thing with TV captions...

[TakinawaTonfa]

I occasionally watch anime with the closed captioning on TV since I'm not exactly #1 in terms of hearing. But anyways here is something that I noticed...

The captions sometime show words that are not being spoken on the scene--probably showing what was REALLY meant to be said.

For example, this one saturday morning I was watching Yu-Gi-Oh (this was back in a time where I knew some aspects of the show were edited, but not knowing HOW badly the show was diced)

I was watching in my basement because I was in close vicinity of a microwave and a freezer full of Mama Celeste pizzas, THE TRUE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS! ;D I had gotten up to prepare a pizza and bided the 3 minutes and 30 seconds time of cooking watching more of Yu-Gi-Oh. Now the microwave I that I was using was kind of old, but reliable, but noisy. This led me to put on the TV's closed captioning feature. Now, the episode I was watching was part of the Battle City Arc where Kaiba is Dueling Isis/Ishizu on the Kaiba Corp Zeppelin. It had gotten to the middle of the duel, and I think Isis/Ishizu had laid a Trap card and it was Kaiba's turn. Kaiba was contemplating wheter or not to attack. At this point, the CC and the actual speech contradicted each other...sort of.

TV Kaiba: "But if I attack, might fall into a trap."

CC: "If I do that, I could walk right into a fatal trap."

The captions had included the word 'fatal' which was not spoken through the TV, as I had soon came to the conclusion that 4kids dosen't use words like 'death', 'dead','dying','killed', anything that sparks the idea of ceasing to live. It was very unusual, but from there on, I've almost always put subtitles and captions on where available.

And I HAVE discovered a few things doing that. Another instance is the....uh...unusual "Super Milk Chan" on Adult Swim.

The TV captions were almost always structured differently than actual speech.

TV: "Oh, Milk, you idiot"

CC:"Youre an idiot Milk"

Even some words were different. (i.e: CC said "tako-yaki", TV says "hot dog")

Has anyone else ever noticed this sort of thing happen?

In addition, does anyone else watch "Super Milk Chan" even if it was only one or part of an episode?

[Dessa]

Often times, from my experience with regular shows, the closed captioning is based off of an earlier script, or the actors didn't say their lines exactly right, but the directors still liked it, or some lines were removed in editing. JAG was always bad about that (watch the one where Mac is trying to use her powers to find someone in the park, it's particularly bad).

With anime, I'm assuming that it's the original translated script that is used for CCs, before they've actually recorded it (in which the actors/directors might decide things sound better differently).

Also, it's common for written dialogue to be worded differently from spoken dialogue, just because it won't make sense without inflection.



What is not excusable, though, is FMA's crappy CCing, which is constantly putting the wrong character as saying things.

[Lobsterdeth]

On an episode of Shaman King they said "f**k" in the closed captions.




Now on a more serious note, they call Mash "Shamash" in the CC.

[Jr.]

TakinawaTonfa said:

I was watching in my basement because I was in close vicinity of a microwave and a freezer full of Mama Celeste pizzas, THE TRUE BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS! ;D

Dude! That is AWESOME!! Finally someone who shares my eating habits!! ;D

I don't watch the CC because either my TV sucks because they show what they THINK the character said so some words some out like um not words!! Like "woyt" WTF?!

[resurie]

djhbgaof I remember Mama Celeste pizzas!! D: I loved those! I would eat them whenever I had the craving...

Curse you Nicaragua!!!

*ahem* Back on topic...err...Mr. Lobster, you were joking about the first one right? xD

Well, I've never noticed anything...I don't use the CC. =P

[Dessa]

Jr. said:

I don't watch the CC because either my TV sucks because they show what they THINK the character said so some words some out like um not words!! Like "woyt" WTF?!

It's not your TV, it's the company that produces the shows. Mine does it all the time (CMT is notorious for bad CCing... the lines often are being displayed over the previous sets of lines, so you get leftovers...).

They're not paying close enough attention to the timing and encoding.


Speaking of timing, that's another reason for the changes. You can say something a lot faster than most people can read, so, to get as much of each line of dialogue on the screen while they're talking, they have to shorten lines.

[NewBee]

The closed captioning I watch is fairly accuarte...Kids WB's closed captioning used to suck so badly...I mean, they'd stick random symbols in their and on occasion the text would change to neon green or yellow with an underline... They fixed that now.

[Shadowchan]

Mr. said:

On an episode of Shaman King they said "f**k" in the closed captions.

What episode was this??