He said what?

Ever since Hubby and I got our first television with closed captioning, we keep the captions on almost all the time. At first it was a novelty. Oh, cool, you can see what they're saying! Then it became a habit. Now, it's a necessity. If I turn it off, Hubby spends a good deal of time asking me what the people on TV just said.

Now, when you're not deaf and you spend a long time watching television with captions, you start to notice the mistakes. Deaf people must think some of these guys on television are nuts, with the things they say. I don't know if they have some sort of voice recognition program that throws words up on the screen regardless of whether or not they make any sense, or if there's some lady at a keyboard typing away and missing the occasional word, but either way, I've gotten a few laughs. Like last night, during couples skating, one of the teams did "double asms." I can't believe they would show that on television!

Sometimes it's a word that sounds just like another word. For example, the word "undoubtedly" might be captioned "under Ali." You see how these things can happen. Sometimes they're not even real words. "Electrical contractor" might become "leck trickle con tacker." It's nuts.

I wonder if it's done subconsciously at times. The other day, on a show about racism and segregation in colleges (not currently - years ago), the word "coon" appeared in the captions. The man on the show said, "I couldn't find any evidence..." but the captions said, "I coon find..." Some captioner somewhere clearly had strong opinions about the topic of that show.

If your television has closed captioning, turn it on for a day. It's an experience.

Well I'm off to my home's cool coe wop. Have ag rate day!