Who did the DVD captions? by ecgordon

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Who did the DVD captions?

POSTED BY: ECGORDON
UPDATED: Sunday, March 21, 2004 19:18
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 4:40 PM

There's no place I can be since I found Serenity.

I've watched all the DVDs multiple times, just the show several times, then the commentaries, and the last go round I set it to read the captions. I was thinking they might have the Chinese words in there. That is only the case in a very few instances, usually just short phrases like "go-se," "dong ma" or "mei-mei" and a couple of others. On the longer phrases they just bracket a notice of [speaking Chinese] or some such in the caption.

But I have also noticed a few errors in the transcription of the actual dialogue versus what the caption says. When the person on screen is the one speaking the words are in a normal font, but when the speaker is off screen the words are in italics, and most of the time they bracket the character's name before their lines. I can't recall right now which episode it was the other night, but in two separate instances they identified the wrong character as the one speaking, once saying it was Wash when it was Jayne, the other time saying it was Mal speaking when it was actually Wash.

But that's not the worst of their mistakes. On most occasions when someone uses the word gorram it is in the caption, but there are at least two times when I am sure that is what is said but the caption says something else. For instance, in "The Message," just as Tracey grabs Kaylee after leaving the bridge when Zoe shot him, and as he is backing up and going around the corner he says, "Gorramit, Mal!" (or at least I am sure that is what he says), but the caption reads "You're a rabbit, Mal!" Now what the hell could he have meant by that?

Then in "Heart of Gold" when Zoe and Wash are talking about having a child, Zoe says, "I don't give a good gorram about relevant," and yet the caption reads "I don't give a good go-around."

You would think that someone would have proofread the captions before the DVD mastering was finalized. Has anyone else watched any of the episodes with the captions on and noticed any other errors?

wo men ren ran zai fei xing.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 4:52 PM

OKKAY

I never caught the mistakes with "gorram" or naming the wrong character. The only thing that bugged me was when I didn't understand a particular line, and I turned on the captioning and all it said was (inaudible). That was annoying.

It seems like they should have at least coordinated with the scripts when they couldn't decipher what was being said.

Too bad, but not a huge deal.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 5:09 PM

SAMURAIX47

The captions are written for the hearing impaired and are not necessarily just subtitles of the script. So you'll get descriptive text to describe what might be heard by the normal viewer.

Also I'm not sure how they transpose the script to the captions... it may be by a sound/word recognition software kinda like doing an OCR (optical character recognition) scan of a document, but here we don't get a true transliteration of what's being said into a text format. There shouldn't be any errors but sometimes the person who's going thru the captions may not be able to hear or understand the subtleties in what's being said and may not have a script to reference it. And they don't have the time to make a call to Joss and and ask what was being said for that particular scene. So they blow it off.

They probably didn't bother with the chinese because that probably would have required a proper translation and that would have cost more money.

just my 2 bits.

Jaymes

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 5:09 PM

KANGER33

Hee. That, "You're a rabbit Mal" thing cracks me up every time. And then I get annoyed.

~Nicole~

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 5:53 PM

FIREFLYTHEMOVIE

My favorite is in that same conversation about having a baby, when Wash actually says, "It's not an excuse, it's objective assessment." The caption reads: "It's not an excuse, its subjective assessment." That's a case where they really should've been able to figure it out from context...

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 8:05 PM

FFYING2

I watched them all with subtitles to check things for my Chinese site. I know they sometimes have to shorten things because people talk faster than we can comfortably read. But some things were just errors.

Let's see...

In Ariel Mal's "gorram plan" is "grand plan" and his "smooth" is "scuth." River's "Your toes are in the sand" is "You have a treasure in the sand." Jayne's "rutting money" is "rotten money."

In Shindig the slaver's second Chinese "wei" is "wei," but his first "wei" is "Wait!" {for what?}.

In Our Mrs. Reynolds Nathan's Canadian pronunciation of "borrowed" is made clear to all with the caption "bore-owed." Also, Wash's "Aiya" is "Hey, uh--."

In Trash Mal's "Yo-Saf-Bridge" is "Speaking Chinese," as is Jayne's "Damplung" in The Message.

Ying
Firefly Funsite http://fireflyfunsite.home.att.net
Firefly Chinese Pinyinary http://fireflychinese.home.att.net

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 8:14 PM

FIREFLYTHEMOVIE

Oh, and the "inaudible" thing from Safe was Mal saying to Simon, "Your talent for alienatin' folk is near miraculous." Or something like that.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 8:23 PM

MCNALLY

I imagine the captions used for the DVD are exactly the same as the ones created for when the show aired. Now, I don't know about Fox's programs specifically, but usually the caption writers are just sitting at a computer and writing what they hear, with no access to the scripts or anyone who could answer questions. Probably why the few short Chinese phrases appear is because the caption writer was certain enough about what they heard to type it into the internet and check that the translation they got seemed to fit the moment.

As for "gorram", it was probably as simple as one company employee "getting it" and another not following the slang. Since the mistakes are both in eps that never aired, they were probably done later by someone who hadn't done the rest of the series.*

As to why these weren't checked before the DVD's were made... :shrug:
Too many other things to do, I guess.

Oh and the objective/subjective thing is just plain silly.

*Edited to add: Forget this bit about what was unaired, as FFYING2 was posting while I wrote this and mentioned "Gorram" errors all over the place.

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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 8:32 PM

FFYING2

Quote:
Originally posted by McNally:
I imagine the captions used for the DVD are exactly the same as the ones created for when the show aired.

From informal checking, the DVD subtitles seem to be exactly the same as the TV show closed captions (except that the latter are all caps).

Oh, here's another odd one:

At the end of Safe when River steals Jayne's roll and Jayne says to her, "Hey," it's subtitled as "Great." He didn't SEEM happy.

Ying
Firefly Funsite http://fireflyfunsite.home.att.net
Firefly Chinese Pinyinary http://fireflychinese.home.att.net

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Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:01 AM

BROWNCOAT1

May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.

I have not watched the DVDs w/ captions yet, but it might be fun to do so just to find the mistakes.

I have seen errors in movies and TV shows before w/ close captioning. Not sure why the errors occur, but it is not exclusive to the FF set.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

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Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:09 AM

CYBERSNARK

I've noticd it in other shows too, to the point of observing that some shows apparently have at least two "shifts" that alternate episodes.

On every second episode of Gundam Wing, Quatre (named for the french "4") becomes "Katra." Apparently, somebody's a Trekkie.

(This has engendered private jokes about Quatre's Vulcan soul.)

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

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Thursday, March 18, 2004 9:53 AM

3OF19

Well commercial subs suck pretty bad in general. They are generally timed badly and often end up ruining punch-lines. Often there are mistakes in the phrasing of characters which might give readers the wrong impression about a character.
I am a member of a group that does fansubs for Japanese tv dramas and could do a better job than the captions on the FF dvds (and I've been only doing it for a coupler of months).

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Thursday, March 18, 2004 9:59 AM

DUKE

Quote:
Originally posted by Kanger33:
Hee. That, "You're a rabbit Mal" thing cracks me up every time. And then I get annoyed.

LOL! There's another good eater egg to put in the movie for fans!

"I'll be in my bunk..."

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Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:02 PM

ANKHAGOGO

I haven't watched with the captions, and now I may have to.

At NineCompanions.net, there are some insanely wrong captions for Fellowship of the Ring. I mean, it's not simply wrong person talking, wrong word saying, it's major plot points screwed all to hell. It's one of the funniest things I've seen.

I'm link-posting impaired. Sorry. :)

"Jayne is a girl's name."

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Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:36 PM

GUNRUNNER

Here is one that surprised me, in Arial when Jayne is looking in the futuristic looking morgue locker thing River surprises him by saying "Copper for a kiss" the caption says [inaudible] yet is completely audible!

The Firefly CCG Web Site:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/Bllm119/firefly_ccg_web_site.htm

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Thursday, March 18, 2004 5:43 PM

LINDLEY

I don't know if this is an error per se, but when River is speaking to Badger in "Shindig", the caption says "Anyone off Titan colony knows better than to talk to strangers."

This website lists it as Dyton colony.

Personally, I think it could be either. But I prefer Dyton.

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Sunday, March 21, 2004 7:18 PM

DELIA

There's a great one in HoG, when River (according to the subtitles) announces, "It's tarting" as Pedaline goes into labor, asking for "Dr. Tan."

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