“AND ANTI-POLL GIFT”

I haven’t blogged yet about the mistakes made on television Closed-Captioning, but it happens a lot.  I’ve been writing down my favorite mistakes for a few years now, something I learned from Aunt Louise.  Many many years ago, she kept a notebook next to the television and would write down the funniest errors, but there were so many she finally gave up on keeping a list.

Tonight I was watching The Daily Show, and perked up when Jon Stewart announced that his guest was Spencer Wells, “a Geneticist and an Anthropologist, he’s the Explorer-in-Residence with the National Geographic Society and his new book is called Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization.”  Since I am an Anthropologist as well, I’m always excited to see ‘our kind’ on television.  Unfortunately, the transcriptionist for Daily Show has trouble with our profession.

The Closed-Captioning (it’s always in ALL-CAPS) introduced Dr. Wells as:

“A DBA NET SIFT AND AND ANTI-POLL GIFT.” 

It was slightly corrected on the next line: “HE IS AN THE ANTHROPOLOGIST,” but it still left out Geneticist and Explorer-in-Residence. 

I know it’s not the transcriptionist’s fault.  Closed-Captioning on television, as well as CART Reporting—Communication Access Realtime Translation—is live (realtime) captioning performed on a stenotype machine.  The transcriptionist does not type in words, but rather syllables that are then translated by a computer program into words.  So if you ever notice that the Closed-Captioning mistakes seem strangely phonetic, it’s because that’s how they were entered!

This wasn’t the first time that my field-of-study was displayed incorrectly on The Daily Show.  Last year, Peter Mancall was on the show promoting his new book Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson; he was introduced as a professor of History and “AND TROA POLL DBI.”

Most of the time, the Closed-Captioning mistakes aren’t too bad and can be deciphered.  When Lorelei on Gilmore Girls yells that she is “out of dog TATS” instead of dog treats, you could probably figure it out.  Same with Gary on Early Edition insisting that he loves his “PANTS” instead of his parents—in the context, he was in the middle of talking about his parents, so it’s pretty easy to catch the mistake.

Then there are times when the mistake is extremely confusing.  A few weeks ago, Brandt and I were watching the season finale of How I Met Your Mother, one of our favorite shows.  Lily and Marshall were discussing a cab driver they’d just seen who looked exactly like their friend Barney.  According to the captioning, Lily said,

“The CABBAGES didn’t look enough like Barney.”

Brandt looked at me, confused, and I paused the show.  “Cabbages?  What do cabbages have to do with Barney?” he asked.  “I have no idea…” I said, equally confused.  It really did sound like she’d said “cabbages.”  I hit rewind, listened to it a few times, and finally yelled, “The cabbie just didn’t look enough like Barney”!

Phonetically, it was close.  Logically, it was way off.