Captioning the weather remains a little fraught – on cooler mornings we’ve seen predictions of “Mr Fogg”, in lieu of mist and fog. That guy is such a damp squib. In a similar vein, the weather was due to turn “Uncle Gene you will” (and here’s me thinking “uncongenial” makes more sense). Uncle Gene, you will always ruin our picnics. Another gentleman made an unexpected appearance in a parenting segment – we heard of young children “going through that Todd LaFace”. Call me old fashioned, but I find it easier to go around him.
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| Though Mr LaFace can be stubborn. |
We’ve been hearing from an assortment of world leaders in the run up to the latest apocalypses. Among them, French president “France were blonde”. I guess France has been touching up its roots, or perhaps there is new polling data showing gentlemen prefer Hollandes. I think the best thing there is Dragon thinking I must pronounce it as a bisyllabic “buh-LONDE”, which is tremendously Mean Girls. Now while I understand that challenging Russia militarily and diplomatically doesn’t present easy options, I was surprised to read, right there in my own captions, President Obama suggesting “imposing tough Saxons on Putin”. Cold War II just turned surprisingly creative-anachronist.
Lots too on the subject of the Scottish independence referendum (when will we see its like again?). One salient point is that compared with the Westminster elite, Scotland’s parliament is described as more egalitarian. Or as a colleague alarmingly captioned it, “more Gaelic Aryan”. Lots of criticism in all quarters for how the debate was covered by various media – though I think it’s a bit drastic that Dragon suggested “the media must come under intense strychnine”. Scrutiny would probably suffice. One of our news clients promised to provide “up the date information” on the debate, proving there is indeed a fine line between information and too much information. We heard a bit about Mary Pitcaithly, the Chief Counting Officer in the referendum. She was previously awarded an OBE, but Dragon thought she had received “adobe”. Which I guess means she can either edit PDFs, or live in a cool house in Santa Fe. The currency question also gave me some grief as a captioner. Dragon bestowed upon the Bank of England “regular tree power”. And when I went to correct it, Dragon eagerly jumped in with “regular Tory power”. Evidently a Yes-voting Dragon.
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| Aye. |
In assorted other on-air mishaps: texting while driving was described as a “nude driving hazard”. Novelty and nudity are after all so interchangeable. That story saw modern cars described as “social media-mobiles”, and I remembered a split second too late that “mobiles” when not preceded by “auto” isn’t pronounced like that. Sure enough, out came “mauve eels”. A contest during a breakfast program was started by the host with the words “one, two, three, goat!” I must admit to having to switch off my mic for a second to avoid putting my laughter to air. It’s always interesting how one error can precipitate another. Thus with a phrase like “really stick my neck out”, an understandable initial error snowballs into the incomprehensible “realistic iMac out”.
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| Well played, Google Image. |
In offline captioning (thankfully non-live, so corrected before airing), some beautiful things happened in a nature documentary. I learned that “the monotreme family consists of platypus and UKIP.” No wonder Nigel Farage can be so prickly. We then heard that platypus in captivity are fed “yuppies”. While I accept that they probably meant an Australian freshwater crustacean, I am deeply enamoured with the idea of a carnivorous class warrior monotreme. And then of course, we had echidnas using their lengthy noseparts to “fish for termites in trees and blogs”. Guess I’d better watch my step. We were after all warned that they aren’t safe to “pat and Kabul” – I’m not sure Kabul is ever perfectly safe. Finally the program crossed to Shark Bay in WA, which my Dragon didn’t recognise as a place, instead suggesting “shark bait NWA”. I may not have the confidence to diss Dr Dre, but evidently Dragon does, so kudos.
Finally, one last bit of silliness from captioning Catholic mass. A Gospel reading focusing on John the Baptist saw him telling the religious leaders of the day, “I am not the Prophet”. But Dragon, sensing a familiar phrase, rendered it as “I am not-for-profit”. Good to know, JBap – be sure to put that on your tax return.
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| “Can I get a receipt for that?” |
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