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Re: Captioning Web Videos - and some feedback from you all please

for

From: Keith Parks
Date: Oct 13, 2008 5:10PM

This may be Old News, but I'll take a shot...

On Oct 8, 2008, at 1:36 PM, John Foliot wrote:

> [snip...]
>
> But the question of multi-lingual content within a caption file
> remains
> one that I am unsure of, exactly. Is this as much a "policy" kind of
> question as it is one of technical discussion:
>
> 1) should we provide the foreign transcript in the caption file? (this
> raises questions of i11n as well, especially with the Japanese rap and
> foreign character sets)
>
> 2) should we provide, instead, a translation of the rap? (even if it
> is
> somewhat out of context; plus then we are providing information that
> non-caption choice users are not getting, so is this right?)
>
> 3) is Kim's choice of simply noting "Japanese Rap" or "German Rap"
> sufficient?


John,

IMHO, strictly from an accessibility standpoint, I think the way she
handles it would be not only sufficient, but the proper way of
providing text-equivalent of the audio information in the multimedia
presentation. In fact, providing translation could be seen as an
editorial distortion/modification of the content, it seems.

(With the caveat that in this case the German is so rudimentary,
combined with the fact that there are some shared word roots between
German and English, that many English-only speakers are likely to
understand *a bit* of the rap. (At least here in California, where we
regularly get to hear The Governator speak.) Not so for the Japanese
and Portuguese, due to the sound quality if nothing else.)

Using the caption function to provide translation *could* be a nice
use of the technology, but would be exceeding the requirements, and
might require the consent of the speaker, since it would add content
to the presentation that the speaker may not have wanted available or
revealed. (In other words, if a translation of the non-English
material was to be part of their presentation, they would have
provided it.)

My 2¢,

Keith

******************************
Keith Parks
Graphic Designer/Web Designer
Student Affairs Communications Services
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-7444
(619) 594-1046
mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/communications

http://kparks.deviantart.com/gallery
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