Wheelin Rev
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Etoile,
Thanks for the reply! I see you are in our area. Perhaps I'll bump in to you at one of the Deaf gatherings around here.
Dave
Captioning screwup during Clinton's interview last night
- Thread starter JanEllenBall
- Start date
Thanks for the reply! I see you are in our area. Perhaps I'll bump in to you at one of the Deaf gatherings around here.
Dave
CaptionerBrenda
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I am a captioner who does live closed-captioning on television. I have enjoyed reading all your comments, and maybe I can clear up some questions you have.
The company I work for employs around 150 captioners who do nothing but live television. We do around 500 events per 24-hour period. They include news, sports, talk shows, reality shows and any breaking news/weather/emergencies. We are given a schedule on a 2-week basis, so we know generally what we will be captioning in the next couple of weeks, but invariably that changes almost daily. In a single day, I might do a football game, an interview with a hockey player and his coach, news in roughly 5 different states, and a political talk show involving local issues in a state 2,000 miles from where I live. I am expected to learn, know and be able to spell correctly and translate the names on both football rosters (not to mention the names of ex-players, coaches, etc), the commentators, the name of the hockey player and his coach, as well as the person who is conducting the interview, the names/spellings of the news anchors and reporters on every station I do- plus I must go to that station's website ahead of time and look up the "names of interest" for the news that day - ie: the name of the guy who robbed the local bank, the name of the mayor who has given an interview, the street names for the traffic report, the names of the local towns/counties in the area for the weather report, and the names of local sports teams/players who will be mentioned on the sports segment of the news broadcast; and the politicians involved in the talk show, as well as the emcee and the local issues. I don't know what I would do without the internet!!
And if there are any emergencies - fire, weather, hurricane, flooding, tornadoes - ( you get the picture) as well as things like the school shootings, presidential statements, hostage situations.....we are on-call for those and expected to cover those as they happen.
All the captioners I know love what we do - we love our jobs! We would be very upset if we thought there were news programs out there going without captions! We are not perfect, but we try!!
Anyway, thought I might help you understand a little of what we do and how we do it!
Thanks,
Brenda
The company I work for employs around 150 captioners who do nothing but live television. We do around 500 events per 24-hour period. They include news, sports, talk shows, reality shows and any breaking news/weather/emergencies. We are given a schedule on a 2-week basis, so we know generally what we will be captioning in the next couple of weeks, but invariably that changes almost daily. In a single day, I might do a football game, an interview with a hockey player and his coach, news in roughly 5 different states, and a political talk show involving local issues in a state 2,000 miles from where I live. I am expected to learn, know and be able to spell correctly and translate the names on both football rosters (not to mention the names of ex-players, coaches, etc), the commentators, the name of the hockey player and his coach, as well as the person who is conducting the interview, the names/spellings of the news anchors and reporters on every station I do- plus I must go to that station's website ahead of time and look up the "names of interest" for the news that day - ie: the name of the guy who robbed the local bank, the name of the mayor who has given an interview, the street names for the traffic report, the names of the local towns/counties in the area for the weather report, and the names of local sports teams/players who will be mentioned on the sports segment of the news broadcast; and the politicians involved in the talk show, as well as the emcee and the local issues. I don't know what I would do without the internet!!
And if there are any emergencies - fire, weather, hurricane, flooding, tornadoes - ( you get the picture) as well as things like the school shootings, presidential statements, hostage situations.....we are on-call for those and expected to cover those as they happen.
All the captioners I know love what we do - we love our jobs! We would be very upset if we thought there were news programs out there going without captions! We are not perfect, but we try!!
Anyway, thought I might help you understand a little of what we do and how we do it!
Thanks,
Brenda