<story><title>BBC Subtitle Guidelines</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/forproducts/guides/subtitles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>Sure, but the closed captioning is still extremely good. The typists use chorded keyboards for speed and yes they occasionally make mistakes but everything is generally quite clear and accurate.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, signing involves actual &lt;i&gt;translation&lt;/i&gt;, not just transcription, which is much more likely to drop meaning or introduce confusion. Translation is already hard enough, and live translation is a whole other level of difficulty.</text></item><item><author>rwmj</author><text>Since I live with someone whose first language isn&amp;#x27;t English I basically watch everything with subtitles.  And live subtitling - while it&amp;#x27;s a thing - isn&amp;#x27;t that good.  Try turning on subtitles for something like a news programme or live broadcast and it&amp;#x27;ll usually be quite delayed, with lots of misspellings and even outright wrong text.  (This is true for premier public broadcasters in the UK such as the BBC, I don&amp;#x27;t know if this is solved better in other countries).&lt;p&gt;Anyway my theory is that sign language interpreters may be much better at this because sign language uses the same areas of the brain as speaking[1] so they&amp;#x27;re able to listen and sign much more intuitively than typing.  Think if you were able to listen and speak at the same time without your &amp;quot;speech&amp;quot; drowning out what you are listening to.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;maxplanckneuroscience.org&amp;#x2F;language-is-more-than-speaking-how-the-brain-processes-sign-language&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;maxplanckneuroscience.org&amp;#x2F;language-is-more-than-spea...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>TechBro8615</author><text>Something I&amp;#x27;ve wondered... when politicians give speeches they often have some hand gesturing from a sign language interpreter standing next to them. But I&amp;#x27;ve never understood why this is better than subtitles. If you&amp;#x27;re deaf then wouldn&amp;#x27;t you rather read text than follow sign language?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>M2Ys4U</author><text>&amp;gt;Sure, but the closed captioning is still extremely good. The typists use chorded keyboards for speed and yes they occasionally make mistakes but everything is generally quite clear and accurate.&lt;p&gt;Live subtitling (on the BBC at least) is mainly done using re-speaking and voice recognition, rather than typing.</text></comment>
<story><title>BBC Subtitle Guidelines</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/forproducts/guides/subtitles/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>crazygringo</author><text>Sure, but the closed captioning is still extremely good. The typists use chorded keyboards for speed and yes they occasionally make mistakes but everything is generally quite clear and accurate.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, signing involves actual &lt;i&gt;translation&lt;/i&gt;, not just transcription, which is much more likely to drop meaning or introduce confusion. Translation is already hard enough, and live translation is a whole other level of difficulty.</text></item><item><author>rwmj</author><text>Since I live with someone whose first language isn&amp;#x27;t English I basically watch everything with subtitles.  And live subtitling - while it&amp;#x27;s a thing - isn&amp;#x27;t that good.  Try turning on subtitles for something like a news programme or live broadcast and it&amp;#x27;ll usually be quite delayed, with lots of misspellings and even outright wrong text.  (This is true for premier public broadcasters in the UK such as the BBC, I don&amp;#x27;t know if this is solved better in other countries).&lt;p&gt;Anyway my theory is that sign language interpreters may be much better at this because sign language uses the same areas of the brain as speaking[1] so they&amp;#x27;re able to listen and sign much more intuitively than typing.  Think if you were able to listen and speak at the same time without your &amp;quot;speech&amp;quot; drowning out what you are listening to.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;maxplanckneuroscience.org&amp;#x2F;language-is-more-than-speaking-how-the-brain-processes-sign-language&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;maxplanckneuroscience.org&amp;#x2F;language-is-more-than-spea...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>TechBro8615</author><text>Something I&amp;#x27;ve wondered... when politicians give speeches they often have some hand gesturing from a sign language interpreter standing next to them. But I&amp;#x27;ve never understood why this is better than subtitles. If you&amp;#x27;re deaf then wouldn&amp;#x27;t you rather read text than follow sign language?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>blowski</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not deaf, don&amp;#x27;t know any sign language, am not close friends with anyone who does.&lt;p&gt;However, I understand that it&amp;#x27;s much easier to be expressive in sign language. Non-verbal language used by the speaker - sarcasm, tone, inflection - either translate badly, or get lost entirely when transliterating into subtitles. A talented sign-language translator is able to carry this over much better.</text></comment>