Miss Happens

You know, there has been some weird reporting about live captions lately. The regulator Ofcom in the UK are being reported in various tabloids as suggesting that lots of captioning errors make captions harder to understand. In other news, the sky is suspected of being blue, the Pope showing signs of leaning towards Catholicism and not all bears fully utilise available public restrooms. I’m willing to assume the tabloids buried the lede somewhere and Ofcom went into more detail about error rates, delays, losses and such, which are the nuts and bolts of caption quality, but the tabloid reports seem to leave it at errors=bad, which is a no-brainer. The Mirror at least takes a whimsical approach to it, using errors=bad as a springboard to segue into a compiled listicle of funny mishaps. But the Sunday Express went bewilderingly fire-and-brimstone with it, using what appeared to be around four errors (ironically enough during a discussion of accessibility services) as a cudgel to attack the BBC, without the slightest discussion of what live captioning involves, or what is an acceptable error rate. They suggest that “Western Mark there is an answer” emerged where the caption should have just read “enough”, which I find pretty implausible because I recognise some of the brushwork. “Western Mark” is definitely an unlucky side-effect of that captioner, whoever they may be, saying “question mark”. I’m guessing the “an answer” part was a mishearing, whether human or software, of “enough”. As for “there is”, two possibilities are equally likely. Either they said it, and the Sunday Express had an uncharacteristic lapse in their usually stellar journalistic thoroughness, or they didn’t say it and it was added in an attempt (futile though it may have been) to trigger their voice software’s syntactical context-recognition. “There is enough…” is less likely to be misheard than simply “Enough”. Anyway, as I’ve said before, we’re in the business of the inexact. An error every minute is great, an error every two minutes makes you that Jedi-on-amphetamines captioner who we all hate a little bit, and if they think three or four errors is newsworthy, then boy howdy do I have some scoops for them.

On with the mishaps! In the lead-up to BAFTAs and Oscars and such, there’s been some tricky film chatter to caption. I know it’s a cliché to joke about his bafflingly homophonous name, but there was a strange, naughty, zeitgeisty joy in realising “an addict Cumberbatch” had gone to air. An award recipient wanted to “thank these gorges, gorgeous women,” because cliff faces are the true unsung heroes of the film industry. The Clint Eastwood classic Letters From Iwo Jima has a certain stoic profundity. “Letters from your Gmail”… does not. Finally, “a noir writer” emerged as “on a wire writer”, which has a nice kind of poetry.

There’s always a little bit of gambling when place names come up unexpectedly. Dragon has a large native database of place names, and we’ve all added reasonably comprehensive wordlists for the places our captions go to air. Still, there’s always a few in need of refinement. Thus we had “pill bra”, which sounds less like an Australian mining region and more like a place you stash your ecstasy so the bouncer won’t find it. Similarly I’m not sure “Albury wood donger” is a real place. Nor are countries spared, with Guatemala finding its way to air as “quite a Mahler”.

Quite.

Politics also remains a source of endless hilarity, and not just in terms of entertaining “captain’s calls”. Who knows what permutation may govern in coalition in the next UK parliament, but I hope no-one sides with the “glib dams” – their arguments, while pithy, don’t hold water. The NHS has been a hot political topic, but while increasing funding for NHS Blood and Transplant sounds like sound policy, “NHS Lard and Transplant” sounds like a Menulog regret waiting to happen. Voting “by conscience” seems laudable; voting “icon sheds” seems incomprehensible. One politician speaking “in relation to debt” spoke instead about “immolation debt”. And here’s me thinking setting fire to stuff isn’t all that pricey. And politics intruded unwonted when a visit to a toy fair became a visit to a “Tory affair”. Political adversaries became political “at the ferries”, which sounds altogether more pleasant. A colleague’s unfortunate pause made Indonesia’s leader “President Joker”. I guess we all appreciate the success of three-word slogans in politics, like “Yes we can” and “Stop the boats,” so I feel “Kill the Batman” is in with a shot. And I had Syria’s leader down as “resident aside”, which I guess given the displaced people in that area isn’t so much funny as not funny.

The owls are not what they seem.

Nature documentaries – still fun. Usually there’s time to nix these before they go to air, as they’re captioned offline, but they give me a guffaw in my booth. So only I got to see that instead of “our aquatic friends,” the humble fish became “power quantic friends”. And an expert, when asked how fast crocodiles grow, apparently replied “Well, it depends what they’re reading.” Finnegan’s Wake is, I grant, a challenge to digest. “Wobbegong” is a fun word at the best of times, but Dragon decided “wobbly goal” was a better fit.

Don’t let it get the best of you.

Captioning church remains an error-spotter’s delight. “Liquid myrrh”, admittedly an obscure phrase, came out as “liquid murder”, which would have made for an undeniably more badass (if less pretty smelling) Messiah. And while “coheirs to eternal life” has a stronger scriptural foundation, “co-eds to eternal life” sounds like more fun.

Forgive me.

The gravitas and dignity of history makes captioning errors in historical features all the more starkly silly. Thus I could only giggle as one colleague marked 10 years since a “50-foot salami” buffeted South-East Asia. And again when combat veterans were said to be suffering from “post-dramatic stress” (I guess they method). And I could only gasp, then giggle as another colleague, in a feature on Auschwitz survivors, made the classic “I scream”/”Ice-cream” switcheroo.

Finally, a couple of random mishaps from lifestyle shows. Recreational archery is made decidedly more challenging when the apparatus becomes “bow and error”. The trade-off between cardiovascular fitness and fun seemed reasonable when “aerobic routine” became “erotic routine”. The tips on where an eligible young gentleman can find the best “rattler pad” may come in handy if I want to have my snake bros over to play X-Box. A celebrity was described as being “no shrieking violet,” which is a good thing as that sounds abjectly terrifying. A sport analyst saying “I sense optimism” unintentionally reaffirmed his commitment to Sparkle Motion when it came out as “ice dance optimism”. “Be with you in a sec” and “be with you in a sack” are two very, very different things. And an interactive segment opening with “we’re back to hear all your thoughts” emerged as “wear bacterial thoughts”.

And that, tabloids, is how you make some gosh darn captioning errors. Just a couple of last things before I go. I mentioned the proposed changes to captioning regulation. Well now there is an opportunity to comment on Australia’s captioning regulations. Go do that! And I’ve talked about how much more smoothly the captioning process goes when you’re part of the process rather than an afterthought. This was recently explored in much more detail in a post on iheartsubtitles. And finally, another interesting post on the educational benefits of closed captions. They… uh, exist.

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How do you like them Mishapples?

Hello to blogglers new and old! For the uninitiated, Mishaps is the kind of post where I share the gems of captionfails, mine and those of my colleagues, largely resulting from lapses in judgement on the part of the usually-excellent Dragon voice recognition software into which we murmur our days away.

Democracy in Hong Kong was the first cab off the rank this month. While Mong Kok may one day go down in history as the birthplace of Chinese democracy, “mong cock” as occasionally offered by Dragon might require a visit to the chemist and some awkward phone calls to former lovers. In a similarly intimate vein, the Gospels could certainly have been more fun if Jesus’ prophecy to Peter had climaxed when “the cock grows three times”, as Dragon inferred. Couldn’t help thinking of the Grinch’s condition.

It’s nice to see sophistry named for what it is in political debates, but Dragon decided Nigel Farage rather has to answer for his “soap history” – I guess no man should know that much about EastEnders. Farage also had plenty to say about EU bureaucracy – but since Dragon seems to kind of like paperwork, the captions instead offered “you rock receipt”. On the subject of UKIP, it was suggested we could “see coalitions” forming. Unfortunately, captions viewers were treated to the rather incomprehensible “sequel ocean is”. Personally, I didn’t think the Oceans sequels were so crash hot. Clooney kind of phoned them in.

And then I say “She looks like Julia Roberts.” Hilarious.

A random netball allocation provided some unintended entertainment. “Sweet netballing moves”, which is a valid if slightly vague observation about the state of play, was unfortunately captioned as “sweet and appalling moves”. Also instead of players who “wear bibs”, we had players who “wet beards”. Which to me sounds like a rather different game.

A dark, dark game.

Nature documentaries continue to provide counter-intuitive captioning fun. A particularly biodiverse environment was described as having a “huge variety” of birds. Unfortunately Dragon preferred “huge pariah tee” which sounds more like a controversial extra-large shirt. I laughed too at the lethargic pedagogy implied by “Galapagos taught us”. Taught us what? We may never know. Bunny domiciles were referred to as “rabbit warrants”, and I was heartened to hear those cotton-tailed homeowners knew their rights when the adorable rabbit cops came a-knocking. The rainforest canopy, we learned, offers woodland creatures the odd “shady brunch”. I can only infer surreptitious eggs benedicts and bootleg flat whites. Ducks took a turn for the emo, apparently having “wept feet”, and sparrows had their hip hop dreams dashed, due to having a “cracker-type beat” with which to eat their nuts and grains and so forth. And a wombat was referred to as a “big boy” by his handler, which is a fair observation. But Dragon took it in a very nihilistic direction, making him a “big void”.

Negative-space wombats next 5km.

Russian diplomacy remains a constant menace in the news. It perhaps doesn’t help when “in principle” support becomes “end printable support”. Those printouts could prove to be important. I did enjoy watching “Putin’s tirade” become “Putin’s Thai raid” though. When the man badly needs a chicken laksa…well, too bad for Ukraine I guess.

He may also enjoy French Canadian hangover food.

Usually Dragon is really good at context. But I’ve had problems before with countdowns. This time, we saw “Three, two, wine…” Hard to argue with his initiative.

Islamic State keep on making the news. Or more pedantically, “so-called Islamic State”. Awful, really. But it did make me laugh when Dragon rendered it “is Linux 8”. That wily OS.

Ebola is also still in the news, with Dragon unfortunately choosing to focus rather superficially on the fashion. Thus instead of “a full hazmat suit” we had “a fall hazmat suit”, presumably distinguished by a flirty off-the-shoulder hermetically sealed cardigan. And while international aid agencies need people who “can coordinate” their response, when captioned as “camcorder mate” it becomes that one guy who likes to record himself jumping off stuff and put it on YouTube. Presumably his heroic moment will come.

Immortality beckons.

Sometimes there’s a very fine line between right and wrong. Case in point: “children’s supply business” becomes “children supply business”. One makes toys, the other gets you on a watch list.

Sometimes it’s the simplest lines which go awry. Thus “there it is” became “buried as”, which turned an innocuous statement into a Kiwi synopsis of Kill Bill 2.

Buried as, bro.

Dragon keeps trying to convince me Indigenous Australians threw “returning meringues”. Who am I to disagree?

It was unfortunate when a character on a soap called “Evie” was named in a caption as “easy”. Not because it was wrong, but because spoilers!

Easy, let your hair hang down.

Dragon tried to convince viewers there was such a thing as “Barack architecture”. I wonder what that would look like?

This one was an offline file, so I had time to correct, and I knew I might need it. The presenter was talking like a pirate, and I figured I’d try my luck. For the record “me hearties” is interpreted by Dragon as “many parties”. I love how dogeish that sounds.

Wow.

Finally one from an overseas colleague, which apparently went to air during the news. “His Holiness the Pope” came out as “His whole penis the Pope.” ‘Nuff said.

“And then I said, consider it a Papal endowment!!”

Just to finish with, a few interesting things from the captioning world. This sketch on captioning beautifully demonstrates the problems which remain in unmediated voice recognition software. This paper on caption placement concisely analyses some excellent data on where our eyes tend to look while watching the captions. This BBC America ad for closed captions made me laugh. And this blog post on the choices we make as live captioners was well worth a read. Try as we might to be invisible and to translate faithfully, we always impose our own perspective.

Oh yeah, and after my last post decrying the unfortunate changes to captioning laws which were suggested by the Australian Federal Government, some good news. The changes were deferred, pending further input. I’m hopeful that means that now the changes won’t simply be waved through without resistance. Viewers, captioners and content creators have noticed – just in the nick of time.

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The Latest in Captioning

So this will be a bit of a shameless variety pack of captioning stuff. A few choice mishaps, some fascinating links from around the captioning world, and a little about some new developments.

Firstly the mishaps. Wars in Iraq and Syria remain extremely fertile ground from which errors can blossom for the unwary respeaker. So I found myself accidentally reporting on "the international hair campaign against Islamic State". Guess David Cameron is really getting serious about split ends. Although I just cancelled this before it could hit the air, it would have been most alarming to report on "the yeti community hiding on Mount Sinjar". Though one would think yetis can pretty much take care of themselves. Less fortunate - I found within a colleague's text logs the brilliant call for "moderate bosoms to condemn these attacks". So unfair how D-cups are never called upon to distance themselves from extremism. And there was something a bit sinister about the military analyst who according to Dragon was proposing (regarding IS) to "nick it in the bath". I rather thought that kind of theft was an urban legend.

In UK news, Lib Dem promises regarding tuition fees have made the news lately. So it was a shame when a colleague had it come out as "Jewish and fierce," which sounds like an uncommonly flamboyant rabbi. And finally a piece on the expansion of one of our clients' catch-up services went awry, when during the intro, "TV fans who missed out" emerged as "TV fancy mister". Which I can only gather looks something like this:

We have fun.

So the first bit of online wonderfulness I came across this week is in a similar vein. Karen Corbel has compiled ridiculously misheard weather captions into a poem. Made me think of the poem I posted earlier from DragonPad corrections. Wonder if anyone else is discovering poetry in live captions?

I assume that's how the first draft of Beowulf started.

Next up, a really interesting New York Times article y'all should read about translation captioning. I can't say a whole lot about that side of things as it isn't my area, but the time-coding aspect is part of what we do in offline captioning. Can be very time-consuming. I feel their pain also on trying to caption Godzilla when the truncated lifespans of the victims mean that sentences never properly end. The same problem occurs (for less satisfying reasons) on the more tabloid of chat shows.

Speaking of things which aren't necessarily my area, I read an interesting piece on the development of the typefaces used for closed captioning. Probably lucky it's not up to me, I'd do Tony Abbott in Comic Sans out of spite.

Last up, some interesting industry politics. Media Access Australia have proposed a shift in captioning requirements for the "multichannels" (ABC2 etc). Currently (though some may exceed requirements) they only have to caption repeats from the primary channel. It essentially means the technology and personnel needed to caption on those channels needs to be maintained, but no new captioning content need be created. MAA proposes a shift to a simpler, more expansive, and more enforceable quota system.

Finally a little bit of news. I mentioned in discussing sport that viewers of scrolling captions need to spend around 88 percent of their time watching the captions, compared with only 67 percent for block captions. I also noted the difficulties in offering block captions live. As I mentioned in discussing news though, there are actually substantial pre-scripted elements in a live news broadcast. Well, for these hybrid-captioning broadcasts, we may soon be able to offer a real-time blend of block and scrolling captions. Once we get our heads around the extra work required, it could be a much smoother experience for our viewers.

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You always tell me - mishaps, mishaps, mishaps.

Welcome to another bumper edition of “things my voice recognition software thought I was saying and hilariously put on the air”!

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.

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.

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”.

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.

“Can I get a receipt for that?”

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Mishaps and more!

I'm beginning to suspect Dragon of playing a very long con. Maybe it secretly wants us to systematically underestimate its intelligence, to its own shady ends. In any case, its many bewildering mishearings continue to go to air.

Pretty cunning, don't you think?

American military pundits have been a staple of my news diet in the past week. We were told by a slightly folksy analyst that northern Iraq was "more complicated than folks realise." Or as Dragon put it, "Morkel placated Ben Foakes realise". Not to worry, thought I, I shall put in a double dash and quickly redo it. Out came "more combat-ready Ben Foakes". Apparently English right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper Ben Foakes is showing some alarming signs indeed.

More combat-ready Ben Foakes

A discussion of "coordination" of international efforts came out as "cod nation". I can't really see what a republic of fish could offer, but I guess Obama really is open to suggestions right now. The situation, after all, certainly is "Coppola catered" (something might have been Lost In Translation there). Dragon reported regarding IS prisoners that "guards eat them often". Incorrect, but tragically plausible. "Massacres" came out as "Mass occurs", which sort of sounds like the Catholic version of "shit happens", or a blasé attitude to the Higgs boson. Finally, a colleague found that cities being defended by "the Peshmerga" were unexpectedly defended by "Depeche Mode", which - I don't know - maybe English '80s alt-pop will be the key to defeating extremism?

Some tactical keytar, presumably with American air support.

Staying on all things poignant, I was far from the only one among my colleagues to refer to the town of "Ferguson, misery". Police efforts to subdue pro-democracy rioters in Pakistan also made the news - apparently "demonstrators want more Joyce". Unexpected, but Ulysses would certainly keep them all busy. In covering the story, a colleague had the splendid unintentional synecdoche that "thousands of nipple took to Twitter." One can only assume Dragon follows Amanda Palmer. Speaking of police, we heard this week from the "chief comfortable" in charge of finding the missing young English man in Spain. Sounds like a decidedly cushy job.

The weather always offers plenty of giggles, this time "our overall high" came out as "hour of rawhide", which sounds like a rather nightmarish YouTube fan-loop.

Sad to hear of the death of Sir Richard Attenborough, but rather surprised to hear of his memorable role in "drastic park".

What new horror have we wrought?

There's been a bit of talk about Western Australian mining recently, unfortunately two analysts in a row had their intros misconstrued. Firstly, our correspondent joined us "live from birth", and for more in-depth analysis, we cut to the "cheap economist" of a mining investment firm. I suppose economising on economists makes sense as the mining boom shifts. NHS food has been in the spotlight in the UK. We have heard how nurses test the food, but Dragon made it altogether more Millennial by declaring "nurses text the food".

Seriously though, food is awesome and
photographing the best part of your day isn't weird.

Delights too in the sport. First off in cricket, Sri Lanka has been problematical before - this time it popped out as "true languor". And I was captioning tennis, and they suddenly rattled off the half-dozen or so career Grand Slam winners. All went swimmingly until Rod Laver became "Rudd Labor". Not sure he can boast a career Grand Slam per se.

Finally a couple of offline ones. "Little parcels of pasta perfection" sound very appetising. "Little parcels of pastor affection"...do not. On a related note, I just googled "priest pasta" for inspiration and found that there's a type of pasta called "strozzapreti" which translates as "priest strangler". How weird is that? Guess that's one way to achieve pastor affection. And a dog called "Zorro" came out as "the sorrow", which sounds like what pet naming might look like for a very committed emo who is maintaining the rage. "Here, The Sorrow. Come on, boy."

But sometimes when Dragon doesn't know something, it just makes you despair of state of the Dragon education system. Usually Dragon knows the names of movie stars, but I was captioning the film review and my Dragon didn't know Stacy Keach. I now feel this overwhelming desire to invite Dragon over for a video night and teach it a thing or two about character acting.

Here beginneth the lesson.

Before I go, a shout out to a truly amazing Tumblr from a fellow captioner, who happens to do a lot of Judge Judy. http://therulingsarefinal.tumblr.com/ Read and giggle, dear reader. And a bit of industry news - ACMA in Australia have just made an adverse finding against Channel Nine over the caption quality during their cricket coverage. http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/news/acma-finds-nine-cricket-coverage-breached-caption-quality-rules Interesting business.

Haps You Won't Want To Miss

So, many apologies for the lengthy blog silence, gentle blogres. I've been caught in a riptide of house moving and had no time. On the plus side, I get to look out the window at actual civilisation as I write this!

Planet earth is blue, and I could really go a chicken laksa.

So as it's been almost a month since my last confession, I thought I'd unload the torrential backlog of errata, before settling down to write something more substantial. To refresh everyone's memory, I live caption TV, through a combination of typing and talking into a microphone, and blog about it. "Mishaps" posts like these document the absurd mishearings made by an otherwise brilliant piece of voice-recognition software called Dragon which will one day become self-aware and enslave us all. The "offline" ones were corrected before air time, the live ones went to air as glorious accidental defacements of the whitewashed surfaces of the professional television network.

So without further achoo, here are the latest Mishaps from your humble RC.

I've posted before about the wonderful silliness of offline captioning televised Catholic Mass. I recently captioned some episodes for the Advent season, which tragically may signify an end, for now, to this rich vein of delightfully Pythonesque religious mishearings. Anyhow, the virtue of "devotedness" became altogether more pragmatic (if perhaps a little fetishy) by becoming "devoted nurse."

That was not the most safe-for-work of google image searches.

I know the Christmas season brings its familial conflicts, but the idea of getting on with "Christmas reparations" still seems a bit drastic. The analogy of the shepherd obviously tends to crop up from time to time, but I admired Dragon's moxie when, in the spirit of Ronald D Moore, the religious analogy was projected into space. So we had the shepherd "gently lead the mother ship". "Messianic cheeses" also appeared (In Gouda We Trust?).

Things took a sharply progressive turn during the creed when, rather than affirming the canonic status of the saints, Dragon declared a belief in "the communion of sex". In the spirit of Christmas, the infant Christ was "by Sears foretold" (their catalogues are certainly illuminating, but their flair for prophecy is so often overlooked). Back in the Old Testament, I was surprised to learn that the father of nations will be "a broom".

The bisyllabic "blessed" continues to delight - "the acid is he who comes in the name of the Lord" sounds like the plot of a Ben Folds song. In the same spirit, while "O Most High" is an apostrophe to the heavens, "though most high" is a striking disclaimer.

What happens in Denver stays in Denver.

We had some religious silliness actually go to air as well - the Bishop of Rochester was waxing conservative, but Dragon attributed his opinions to the "airship of Rochester". And of course, crossing the spiritual gulf, we observed the holy month of "run and gun".

Sweet.

Captioning the weather always leads to some corkers - the pace at which meteorologists extemporise leaves no time for correction when captioning live. So in no particular order: Tomorrow's weather in the Midlands will be "nowhere near as human". Which can, one assumes, only be a relief for those in the Midlands. One day recently the weather rose dramatically, but an overcaffeinated Dragon decided on "roaster manically".

Ex-Hurricane Bertha spent a lot of time approaching the British Isles, but when it got there, the low pressure system settled over the "reddish piles". The word "temperature" is a fraught one too. The way I pronounce it, there's just a fraction of a second of silence after the first syllable, which gets Dragon's knickers in a twist. So we had "temperatures rose" come out as "the frigid rose", which sounds like the name of one of those ice bars where a girl named Inga serves shots in glasses made of ice.

Finally, I use a house style for weather which autocorrects a whole lot of words often used in the forecast. It's important to take it off  when the weather is done though, as I discovered when just after the weather "my dad is really funny" was autocorrected into "my damp is really sunny".

Offline nature documentaries continue to offer fantastic blunders. We had a "reading program" for endangered pandas, which I can only guess is so that they can decipher the Kama Sutra and get cracking. We had meerkats, who I discovered stand upright to "watch out for creditors". I guess "hakuna matata" is no way to manage one's finances. The echidna, by contrast, "uses its spikes to deter editors". I guess he's on a deadline. Still on weirdly bureaucratic wildlife, I was surprised to learn that kangaroos use their pouches to carry "juries".

We find the defendant adorable.

More great mishearings in offline cooking shows as well. Some lovely dishes are sweetened with agave, but for far rarer fare, discerning chefs use "a Garbo". Well, she was great in Anna Christie, and not too syrupy.

"Two eggs, lightly Britain" seems a little much for a Spanish omelette. A home-made mayonnaise came with the serving suggestion "add it to a salad or some savages". Perhaps Dragon intends to trade fine condiments for a sturdy canoe. "Nanna and chocolate" seem like fairly troubling ingredients for a smoothie (need a hell of a blender). And I think it's well past time to turn down the heat on the roux once the "brothers melted".

Finally, an incidental instruction took a surprising turn when "just to go into the mix" came out as "just a goat into the mix". While one can presumably cook goats whole, I felt the lack of preamble was disconcerting. Cooking got a bit ideological too - "you've left this little bit for me" became "a leftist little bit for me".

Submitted without comment, comprehension.

Finally a selection of random bits and pieces from live news. The less said about Netanyahu the better, but when he was asked about "proportionality", Dragon made it a question of "Porsche and Audi". Guess genocide goes better with nice cars. I was weirded out to discover my Dragon didn't know the words "Loch Ness Monster" at all, it became "lot less monster", which does, I grant, reflect Nessie's critically endangered status.

Ruh-oh.

The Ebola outbreak is desperately difficult to manage, but I was alarmed at the proposal to pursue "excremental drugs". Still, anything to contain it I guess. Christopher Reeve made the news in relation to his friendship with Robin Williams, but my Dragon thought I meant Pakistani politician "Mr Sharif", who has to date appeared in far fewer Superman films. Rather subtly, Russia's threat to withdraw from the International Space Station may herald the end of the era of "space without Borders". I guess an orbiting book store with convenient coffee shop would be kind of neat, a weird thing to threaten the West with though. Dragon struggled a bit with antonyms lately as well, suggesting that "love will triumph over Kate".

Surely nothing can triumph over Kate.

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