Pat Heigham

Being a bit hard of hearing (bad for a sound man!), I switch on the subtitles, but is there

a stenographer on a keyboard? The spelling is atrocious, maybe there’s a ‘speech – to – text’ programme which needs tweaking?

Anybody know?

Alan Taylor

My understanding is that it depends on the programme.

Scripted programmes can import the actual text from the script or are sometimes subtitled by specialist companies, while live programmes have to rely on AI powered speech to text software. Speech to text software often makes errors when proper nouns are involved. As it depends on what it hears, strong accents can confuse it too.

Graham Maunder

The best sub-title fail I saw was whilst in Sochi for the Winter Olympics and watching BBC News with the sub-titles, welcoming the new Chinese Year of the Horse became the Chinese Year of the Whores!!

Dave Plowman

If they are working from the often mumbled dialogue, no surprise they sometimes get it wrong. IIRC, in the first days of subtitles, they worked from an amended script (as shot, and provided by the script supervisor) These days bound to be artificial intelligence – often thick as mince