As we’ve long established, I watch a lot of educational programming with my kids. This can include clips from the official Sesame Street YouTube channel. This is where I first encountered possibly the single most infuriating caption available—namely “sings/speaks in foreign language.” This is particularly frustrating on Sesame Street, since the whole point of the video in question is to help kids be bilingual—either by helping Spanish-speakers learn English or English-speakers learn Spanish—and the captioning just assumes that English is not only the default but the only necessary version.
Spielberg’s West Side Story gives more space for the Spanish-speaking characters. As in, there’s considerably more Spanish in his version than in the original. Further, it isn’t captioned in English, so the English isn’t considered the default. I approve of this, at least in theory. On the other hand, when you watch the movie on Disney+, it isn’t even captioned in Spanish. It’s another of those “speaks in foreign language” captions. Which means that, if you can fumble your way through Spanish but they’re going too fast for you, you can’t even pause and work it out, much less look it up in a translate program.
This is annoying enough for me. I won’t say I have perfect hearing, but it’s not bad. I mostly use captioning when I’m watching things because it means I can have the volume relatively low and still catch what’s going on, or deal with distractions around me and not miss things. It’s a habit I got into in college, when we used to watch Star Trek Voyager in a friend’s dorm living room while eight people were having three conversations around us. (Oh, college.) It’s definitely been a good call while parenting. I can watch things with my kids asleep next to me and not worry about missing dialogue when I have the movie I’m watching low enough to keep the explosions to a minimum.
For other people, though, it’s considerably worse. Imagine being a bilingual person with hearing issues. You are fully capable of understanding what Anita and Bernardo are saying to one another, if you can find out the Spanish, but the only captioning you have is “speaks in foreign language.” The English is absolutely the default here. It’s what’s deemed worth captioning, because it’s assumed that it’s what the audience will understand. It’s probably possible to watch the whole thing with Spanish captioning—I didn’t check—but then you’re not getting the full experience of the cultural conflict between the two language groups.
There’s an extent to which it doesn’t bother me when it’s clear that the English-speakers in the movie don’t understand and the audience, by extension, isn’t supposed to. Though of course there’s always the fact that audiences exist that understand pretty much any language you’re going to use. Even if it’s a conlang, someone’s going to learn it. Oh, sure, what the script says people are saying isn’t necessarily what they’re actually saying. Film trivia is full of examples; apparently, Children of a Lesser God includes at least one argument that’s not in the script. That’s not the point.
I have long insisted that failure to caption should be considered an Americans with Disabilities Act violation. There’s no excuse for it. I’ve made a single YouTube video in my life thus far, and it is captioned. It was a pain to do, but I did it, and I didn’t settle for auto captioning, either, because I’m aware of exactly how bad that can be. (My favourite Bad Captioning Example is from Time Team and is “Saint [Celtic name].”) Further, though, if there’s more than one language in your video, you need to caption all the languages. You’re doing your viewers—regardless of their hearing ability—a disservice by not.
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