plap-slap:
I’m going to make this as quick as possible before you scroll by this with boredom, I swear to you it’s very important.
Please end craptions.
I was just watching the “Who Killed Markiplier,” series and being very hard of hearing, use closed captions for everything I watch. In this case, the captions ruined some of it for me.
Very few Youtubers caption their own videos, even less have good volunteers for it. Please don’t scroll by just yet, and remember that you’re not the only one who enjoys watching videos.
Many captions are awful, spoiling, or downright ableist with several slurs. Here is an example that actually makes me sick to my stomach.
If you have to time to help out the Deaf/Hard of Hearing community by captioning videos, here are some examples of what not to do.
- Please do not add your own commentary.
- Please don’t put your own sentences in parenthesis.
- Please no “That’s what she said,” Lenny Faces, or XD’s in your captions.
- Please don’t add actions if they’re visible on camera.
- Please don’t add things such as “*Sassy face.* “(Bye Felicia!)” etc.
- Don’t add things such as [ ___ is tired of ___ shit.]
- For things like Antisepticeye, or Darkiplier, don’t type ļị̱̙k͇̺͚͜e̫ ͙̩th̞i҉̭̯̙s͕̠̪͍̤͞, it’s too hard to read and captions go by fast.
Things you can do!
- Add everything said! No line is too unimportant to be skipped or shortened!
- If everyone is talking at once, add [Name], hyphens to show an interruption, etc.
- Add [Offscreen] and the noise heard/things said.
Just remember this, if it’s not in the video, don’t put it in the captions!!
Thank you, and love from this HoH kid.
Ditto to all the above.
Don’t rely on auto-generated craptions. Sometimes they fool you: they can seem okay for a few lines, then suddenly have all kinds of weird transcription errors that only a human being can recognize and correct. If you genuinely care about enabling people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have auditory processing disorder actually understanding what is said or done in your videos, then use HUMAN edited captions.
In addition to the tips shared by @plap-slap above:
Also include information on tone of voice, especially in circumstances where the tone of voice conflicts with the facial expression/body language, or where the person’s body language can’t be seen because they’re off screen, or if the tone of voice conflicts with content of what is said. For example, someone says “I’m fine” but they sound angry or sad, then indicating their tone of voice matters in how the viewer interprets the scene. Tone of voice can be indicated in parentheses.
During conversations, be sure to indicate who is speaking, ESPECIALLY for off-screen speakers, but even for on-screen speakers. I can’t count the number of times I have had to re-watch and re-watch a poorly captioned video before finally making sense out of a conversation where it wasn’t clear who was saying which line. Or the number of times that I have belatedly discovered that I had completely misinterpreted what was happening because I thought one person said a thing, when it was actually the other person who said it. You can indicate the speaker similar to how it is done in a script, for example:
Victim: Help, save me!
Supergirl: I will save you!
(Except you might use the victim’s name, if the character has a name.)
It helps if you put a line break and start a new line each time that a different person is speaking. Don’t mush one person’s line into the line of the next person, even if there’s still room to fit it in. START A NEW LINE. This will help signal that the person speaking this sentence now, is not the same person who said the previous sentence.
YES, do indicate noises that are happening, particularly sounds that tell you what is happening off screen or that are not otherwise obvious from the action that we can see on the screen. (Sounds usually go inside parentheses, so they won’t be interpreted as lines being said by people.)
I once watched a scene at the start of a comedic show with Spanish subtitles instead of English captions (for reading practice in Spanish). Foreign translation subtitles usually leave out sound descriptions, so in this scene I just saw a woman who was trying to sleep but tossing restlessly in bed unable to sleep. I thought she just had insomnia and thought the rest of the episode was going to be a series of hilarious attempts to solve the insomnia or something. But then when I got to the next scene, I realized part way into the woman’s conversation with her friends about her restless night that something was REALLY OFF in how I had interpreted what was happening when she was tossing so restlessly in bed. So I went back to re-watch this scene, this time with English captions written for deaf viewers, which meant that it included references to what sounds were happening in the background. This is when I finally understood that there were a lot of random noises in the background–and from the way the woman kept reacting exactly as each sound was reported in the captions, it was so clear that she was reacting directly to each sound, being annoyed and distracted by the sound. So she wasn’t struggling with insomnia, she was struggling with the annoyance of these noises keeping her awake.
Leaving the sounds out of the captions can in some cases COMPLETELY TRANSFORM how deaf/HoH viewers understand or interpret what’s happening on the screen. Sounds convey a lot of information that might not come through in dialogue alone: someone slamming a door off screen or slamming plates or whatever onto a table tells us a lot about their mood, for example.
Is someone knocking at the door? Or calling out someone’s name off screen? Put that in the captions. Are there footsteps being heard in what is otherwise a seemingly empty parking garage? Say that in the captions! Phone ringing? Microwave dinging? Say it in the captions! Any sound that helps us understand what is happening in the environment should be indicated (in parentheses) in the captions.
Any sound that a person reacts to should be indicated in the captions so we understand what they’re reacting to. I have often been confused by characters who just randomly stop talking and look at the door for no immediately apparent reason. Sure, I do usually figure out there must have been either a knock or a doorbell once I see them open the door and see that someone is there. But it would save me that annoying/frustrating moment of confusion if the captions could just SAY that there is a knock or ringing doorbell.
Any important sound that the character is ignoring should also be indicated, so we know the sound is there and realize they’re ignoring it. For example if someone knocks at the door but the character maybe looks at the door but otherwise just ignores it, that tells us they’re either avoiding people in general or maybe ignoring one person in particular who they think might be at the door.
Also: if you see any garbage in the captions, go to edit it, and click the little flag. I don’t know what it does, but I’m pretty sure if a caption YOU write gets flagged enough, you can’t make them anymore.
