So I mentioned
at the end of my last mishaps post that I've been captioning Catholic Mass during my offline hours, and it continues to be the source of fierce hilarity as my Dragon struggles with the finer points of the sacred.
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| The point of that lance, for example. |
With two or three more episodes gathered under my hairshirt over the past week, I was going to simply dedicate a Mishaps post to the tares, falling as they do within the lovely nexus between the sublime and the silly. But then I realised that captioning church is more interesting than that, and that I actually had Something To Say. So with the wisdom of Solomon I shall try to do both (that ended well for him, right? I couldn't read the end of his song because the pages were stuck together).
So sometimes archaic language gives Dragon grief. I appreciate that "coheirs to eternal life" is an unconventional turn of phrase, but I did like Dragon's ignorant valour in conjuring up "coerced to eternal life". Sounds almost as though he may have some unhappy memories of a strict Catholic education.
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| The existence or otherwise of Google Image results for "strict Catholic education" is an operational matter. |
But in general, voice captioning church is great. The congregants' responses are hard-captioned in onscreen graphics before we even get there, giving those elements a degree of difficulty on a par with Dora the Explorer.
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| Look away, lest those cold, dead eyes explore your very soul. |
Incidentally, I had to laugh, when the faithful were called upon to "incline your ear", and my Dragon decreed they must "incline your beer".
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| Go home, Dragon, you're drunk. |
The readings are all public domain (good luck finding the exact translation to copypaste, but you can give yourself a hell of a cheat sheet) and are even prefaced by which book they're from (I have a footnote fetish you guys). The pace is moderate, in keeping with both the sombre content and the demographics (the target audience, while probably broad enough, must at least include older, less mobile churchgoers who aren't able to make it every Sunday). A Gospel reading and sermon constitute one of the very few close readings of a text available on television, which can be quite refreshing for the wistful scholar-types among us. The music is deliberately, unequivocally soothing. And long stretches of Eucharistic stage business, handshaking and silent prayer require no captions at all. Plenty of opportunities for mishaps though - "the peace of the Lord" emerged as "a piece of the Lord," and there were some alarming suggestions that Jesus "lives and brains with God".
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| Dragon perhaps climbing aboard the "zombie Jesus" meme. |
In general Dragon really seems to struggle with the notion of the Trinity. I can very well understand, the fluid unitarian/trinitarian nature of God has perplexed scalier scholars than he. But really, "the Father, the Son, and the whole experience"? Or "the Father, the Son, and the police bureau". The latter may of course be a jab at church and state. And sometimes the transfiguration of the sacrament can present ontological problems, hence the body of Christ was announced with "we come to break out Brad".
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| George, Elliott and Don can come too. |
But basically, stimulating and easy - thus far a tick in every box for a captioner. But I also found something altogether more surprising. The entire service engages the voice in some really intriguing ways. See, liturgies are explicitly tailor-made to be not only spoken aloud, but incanted. Everyone on the screen speaks in a clear, mellifluous, reverent monotone. Which, coincidentally, is just the sort of thing my Dragon eats up like tenth century Danes. There is no act of "translation into monotone" required of me, as there might be, for example, captioning Oprah.
Further, large swathes of the liturgy are designed to be spoken in unison. This too happens to be right in the voice captioner's wheelhouse (if indeed we housed wheels). It's hard to describe but the pauses are subtly more generous, the metre a shade more consensus-based. A crowd chanting in unison, even if speaking quite quickly, are just easier to join and respeak than a lone speaker. The repetition and anticipation, from the parts of the service I've memorised, only enhance this effect. And it's only mildly dampened by hearing how the apostles "prey with a stick" (in lieu of praying with the sick) or when "blessed Joseph" becomes "lesser Joseph".
It must have been the mistaken belief that we were captioning some kind of cricket investigation which led Dragon to declare God's intention to "separate the wicket from the just". And I grant that "He comes to call sinners" is far less tangible than "He comes to call centres" - the latter would work as a way of imagining a literal hell for Christ to encounter.
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| Abandon hope. |
With all that in mind, I got to thinking of the ritualistic, transcendental element of voice captioning. Perhaps there is something spiritual in arranging your mind to murmur, without really listening to your own voice, an empty echo of whatever you hear, automatically regulating the pace, uttering the punctuation, knowing with the instinctual certainty of the devout that after "the Lord be with you" will always come "full stop yellowmac and with your spirit full stop whitemac". To be made the passive channel of a disembodied voice, and to set it in digital stone.
The flesh made word.
Disclaimer.
