#I don't know everything. I mainly worked in TV captions but I picked up some stuff abt streaming/youtube captions too over the years

[pegasusdrawnchariots]

OK this used to be my day job!! & I have answers for some of the complaints I've seen in the tags (the See More got vvv long. beware)

1) Why do subtitles paraphrase/cut down what someone said? Why not just quote them verbatim?

basically: minimum durations + size limitations (esp in older formats) + characters displayed per second. LEGALLY captions have to be visible for 1 second minimum each. caption blocks (each individual caption u see on screen usually in 2-line chunks) have character limits. AND. AND. the amount of characters shown on screen within a certain timeframe cannot exceed the CPM limit bc it would be too fast/too much to read. SO to make captions that fit the tech limits & that are short enough to read between changes & that are visible long enough to read...we have to paraphrase. This Is A Last Resort. captions SHOULD be verbatim. but if someone is speaking too fast to fit these limitations we have to paraphrase. the logic is it's better to have OK captions than none (or severely delayed ones/unreadably long ones)

2) Why do captions say (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)? Why not just put the language or, better yet, caption the foreign speech?

we would absolutely love to!! nothing makes me happier than being able to accurately caption grabs in foreign languages!! however (sadly) the captioner is kind of their only resource. if u as a captioner don't know what was said, or cannot with 200% confidence explicitly declare what language is being spoken, u have to put that (FOREIGN LANGUAGE) tag. we hate it too :( recently it was changed to (SPEAKS LANGUAGE UNKNOWN TO CAPTIONER) bc we got this complaint a lot but now people just get mad that we don't know every language ever. if we are given a script & the script contains any of this info, it WILL be captioned accurately. but if they just give us video/audio & we have to play it by ear... well, we aren't allowed to go around guessing, bc if we caption the wrong language, people will obviously get offended that their language was lumped in with another vaguely similar one. & also tech limitations are another (recurring) issue. if the language is more or less in the Latin alphabet, we can caption it (ONLY if we're confident in what's being said). but if it uses any other character set, then older tech may not support it. TV captions famously have this limit. streaming captions probably not

3) I'm watching foreign films. I don't know the language well enough to forgo subtitles but I know enough to tell that they're wrong.

hello. we are the same, u & I. 90% of u with this complaint will have come from Netflix. here's the deal: as of a couple of years ago, Netflix changed their foreign film captions. they used to be relatively faithful translations of the original language. NOW however.........they are just captions of the English dub. yep :| if u turn on the English audio track, u will see that suddenly the captions are perfect.

(the only reason I noticed this was that I was on a Studio Ghibli binge. part way through, I noticed that some of my fave quotes were no longer appearing. some characterisation had also changed (!!), e.g. girls saying "sorry" instead of "thank you". none of this was the dialogue I had come to love over years. however, it did sound awfully familiar to the US dubs I had experimented with once or twice... I turned on the English audio & sure enough, they now matched :] yayyy...)

the obvious solution here is to have the option of 2 subtitle files: one for the English dub & one translating the original language. idk why they wouldn't do this. those files surely would still exist...?

anyway. I hope this answers some of yr bigger concerns! the state of it sucks & will only get worse as AI-generated captions (& translations... shudder) replace human captioners. stay safe out there 🫡

one profession that does need better gatekeeping is people who write or translate subtitles. brother that is not what was said.