NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Truth via Captions: "What's Under Their Kilts?"
Truth via Captions: "What's Under Their Kilts?"
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000731.html
Greetings. A few weeks ago in "Why Web Video Captioning Is So
Important" ( http://bit.ly/ddHsiS [Lauren's Blog] ), I mused on the
importance of captioning to Web videos, and emphasized why YouTube
users should take advantage of various YouTube captioning tools
(automated and manual) to create the best possible experience for
their viewers.
What I didn't discuss then was a more basic issue -- how the ways that
videos are captioned (or dubbed) can fundamentally alter how they are
interpreted, even to the extent of completely changing intended
meanings.
This was brought home to me very recently when I watched a broadcast
copy of a film I had not viewed for many years, the delightful 1966
movie "King of Hearts" ("Le Roi de Coeur").
[Trailer: http://bit.ly/beo9gm (Zimbio) ]
Set near the end of World War I, the characters in the three involved armies
each speak in their native languages. This creates a complicated
dubbing/captioning scenario, since typically any audience would want
at least two of the three languages translated.
Language translations are less than an exact science of course,
especially when idiomatic phrases are involved. (That said, automated
translation techniques, such as Google Translate, have become
extremely useful indeed, and will only get better with time.)
When I first saw King of Hearts decades ago it was in a fully-dubbed
form without subtitles, and used fake accents to try indicate which
language the characters were speaking at any given moment. This led
to specific plot elements that never quite made sense to me at the
time.
Captioned versions of videos and films have -- in my opinion --
generally done a better job, though timing requirements in
manually-captioned cases can sometimes result in "text
simplifications" that might leave out words or entire phrases.
In the YouTube context, captions also open the ability to perform
automated translations based on the captions themselves -- obviously
of immense benefit.
But here's an interesting question -- what happens when captions (or
dubbing) are used to fundamentally alter dialogue in a film, perhaps
as a form of subtle censorship or worse?
Both dubbing and captions carry this risk, but the risk with dubbing
seems far higher, since the underlying original dialogue tracks will
not be heard for comparison by native speakers of the language.
Automated captions will virtually always be trustworthy in this sense.
While there may be a significant error rate in automatic captions
(especially in the presence of background noise or music), deliberate
alteration of meaning is highly unlikely, and the original audio is
still immediately available for comparison.
I haven't revealed "what's under their kilts" yet. The reference --
and the relationship to this entire discussion -- comes from a short
segment of dialogue in King of Hearts itself that was the trigger for
my pondering this topic today.
In a particular captioned scene (the actors are speaking French at
this point), a number of Scottish soldiers are dancing a jig. A
character in the film asks her companion, "What's under their kilts?"
To which the companion -- after taking a quick peek -- replies,
"Nothing!" Leading to the response from another character, "You mean
everything!" A rather cute turn of phrase.
But when I saw this scene a couple of evenings ago, I couldn't
remember ever having heard the "Everything!" response before. In
fact, I recalled -- from many years ago -- an entirely different and
rather odd line of dialogue entirely.
I dug out an old tape and discovered that I was correct. The ancient
dubbed King of Hearts version in my collection had the character
replying to the question, "What's under their kilts?" with the
response I remembered: "Petticoats!" (making the following line, "You
mean everything!" completely nonsensical).
Since this was a dub job, I couldn't hear the original French
dialogue, and I can't effectively lip-read French (or any other
language, for that matter).
I'll admit that a rather ham-fisted attempt at film sanitizing may not
be a big deal in the scheme of things -- but it had me fooled for many
years.
Still, these issues -- particularly the key potential to verify
captions by inspection of the original audio -- may be particularly
important (for example) in the context of sound bites with political
ramifications, where unscrupulous parties might try to post materials
with falsified translations aimed at particular target audiences.
While one might hope that Internet access to underlying source
materials and references would tend to reduce such risks, the plain
truth is that many persons will simply accept what they see or hear
the first time around and never think to go digging on the Net for
verification.
Just a little something to consider, especially if you're ever
inclined to doubt the ever-growing importance of captions in our
increasingly video-centric world.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein