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Re: Captioning Verbatim or for Corrected English

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From: David Sloan
Date: Mar 9, 2016 1:53PM

Hi all

It's helpful to look at what the BBC has to say on this, as one of the most significant providers of captioned media in the world, and as an organisation with a legal responsibility to deliver accessible broadcast materials.

They provide a detailed and useful document providing editorial guidelines on captioning, in this PDF document (published 2009):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/accessibility/subtitling_guides/online_sub_editorial_guidelines_vs1_1.pdf

It provides guidance on what to do in the case of hesitation and interruption (on p25), which starts with the following advice:

"1. If a speaker hesitates, do not edit out the"ums" and "ers" if they are important for characterisation or plot. However, if the hesitation is merely incidental and the "ums" actually slow up the reading process, then edit them out. (This is most likely to be the case in factual content, and too many "ums" can make the speaker appear ridiculous.)"

In the same section, there's lots of helpful additional context-specific advice on different scenarios relating to hesitation and interruption, and many other common scenarios.

Dave

David Sloan

UX Research Lead
The Paciello Group
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