Monday, March 27, 2006

Why is there no closed-captioning in India?

Closed-captioning is the captioning (or commonly called subtitles) for TV and for movies in theaters. In USA and in some other coutries, this is known to be mandatory by law.

I used to like watching TV and have now given up any serious watching (except for some action movies, sports or reruns of movies I have already seen, which I watch with the audio muted). I have also given up watching movies in theatres. I have moved to DVDs but have to make sure they have English subtitles, which in many DVDs are completely absent, have horrible transliteration or mysteriously disapper during climax or important scenarious (arrgh, can you guess what happens to me then?). Note though, subtitling is different from closed captioning, the former being just transliteration of spoken words, meant primarily for non-English people, while closed-captioning is specifically meant for deaf and HOH with a running commentary on all these folks are missing out (Example: [Door Closing], [Gun shot], etc.)

Coming back to my original point, why is it in India we are late to wakeup to the need for closed-captioning? Why not make a start with informational programs first - like News or awareness programs like Global Warming on Nat Geo? These educational or awareness channels like National Geographic or Discovery could take a lead and initiave. If you think there could be implementation problems, the News channels would already have teleprompters. And I am sure for other programs, the script would be available in electronic format. Why not add a small piece of software that could display these captions as tickers? I accept I am totally ignorant of production and broadcasting technologies, but if there is an intention, it can be done, technology is never a limitation.

Come on guys, this would be of immense help to include the deaf and HOH community into the mainstream. Who knows what talent is lurking there, being obscured by lack of access to mainstream information?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Girish,

I strongly agree with you on getting hearing impaired and HOH people to the mainstream.
My Father-in-Law cannot hear since last many years, i wonder at times when he would have last seen a movie. While searching for movies with subtitles in many videos libraries in bangalore, I came to know about the term "Close Captioning". And like you was very disappointed to see that in a city like Bangalore there are almost no such provisions.
I strongly like to say that it should to be made mandatory for all the movies by the Government. Do let me know if I can be of any help in this move for equality.

GM said...

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I am keen to do something in this area too - if you have any suggestions do let me know.

One thing we could do is - write to all popular English movie channels and ask them to telecast movies with sub-titles. I think it shouldn't be too hard for them - since they get original movies from the studios direct. It takes just one movie channel to become socially responsible. All other channels will follow suit. I am seeing a small trend that some of the more popular movies telecast do have sub-titles (Superman Returns on HBO recently had). The latest channel World Movies, invariably has - but that may be because most of them are foreign language movies.

I did mail some of the channels in the past using the email ids I got on their websites - didn't get a response. Instead of doing this on an individual basis, if we do it through an NGO or a special school, it will have more impact. Do let me know if you have contacts of reputed ones.

Pl mail me on gammay -at- gmail -dot- com to continue discussing.

Regards.