Caray, Caray!

Okay Melinama. I just sent mine in. I picked "otro" for the tema and then wrote my note in English.
 

Meliinama: I sent my note in Spanish, but noticed that you can click on English and the form will come up in English. Thanks.
 

Wow, thanks for that tip, Pasofino. The English button is at the top of the screen (the last place I looked, LOL).
 

I'm sending my note now and I'll encourage anyone else I can think of to do the same. Thanks so much Carlos for finding this and Melinama for promoting it.
 

I have sent a message in Spanish (not easy to fit much into the limited characters) But thanks to Carlos and Melinama for giving us the address so they can hear from us.

So here is what I wrote edited for maximum efficiency. It is a challenge not to be able to be wordy!

"Me ama sus telenovelas,escribo traducciónes para un blog, CarayCaray en inglés. Por favor arregla sus subtitulos yá. Gracias"
 

Oops, I just said I love myself, didn't I. I changed it from me encanta to save letters so forgot to change the pronoung. Oh well. I think the point still is valid.
 

I left a message in English. Pretty frustrating how few words they give you to express your dissatisfaction. I managed to get in that I'm studying Spanish.
 

Done. Thank you Carlos and Melinama.
 

Just sent mine. Hope it helps.
 

Thank you for making this so easy! I sent a note and indicated that I am a person with a hearing loss (albeit age-related) who needs closed captioning to understand their programming. I encourage others in my position (or condition) to do the same.
 

I just did mine. Thank you all so much!
 

Done, also
 

Thanks. Hope this helps.
 

Thanks for the link. I just sent mine. I have been reading the recaps and comments from all of the wonderful people that spend so much time to do them every day. I found this website about a year ago and just love it. I am trying to learn Spanish and I really enjoy all of your wits. I don't ever post anything, but I am out here probably like a lot of other people. I am sure you have more followers than you know. Thank you so much for doing what you do. You are very much appreciated. Lynda
 

Thanks, Melinama and Carlos!!!!

Jeanne
 

And here's what I sent them:

Nos encantan las telenovelas. Recientemente, los subtítulos son horribles. ¡Yo suplico que Uds. los mejoran como antes!

Which is a somewhat loosely and poorly stated way of saying: We love the telenovelas. Recently, the subtitles are horrible. I beg that you improve them like before! (To what they were before was my intent).

It fit the character limit. It said what I wanted. And I wrote them with my complete title and company. Perhaps that will get their attention.

Jeanne
 

Hurray Jeanne for using your legitimate and impressive authority in your position to help the Univision community.
 

Cheryl:

;-)

At the risk of being accused of throwing one's weight around (which could be seen as considerable).....one does what one can.

Jeanne
 

For Lynda and the rest of the group
I too mainly read your recaps and love the comment part. once and a while i will comment...but mainly just enjoy the novela and reading the recap...... thank you all for doing this and you do have a big list of followers.... I know i have given many an interested person your blog address and they love it......i too have sent my complaint in...just finished watching tonights chapter and i am dying to see how eduardo will appear and see fernanda face to face......... maybe his bud, Steve will come and help out...he may be Ed/Fr for a day.....Beverly
 

I would think the captions for Manana Es Para Siempre are already "In the can" and couldn't be changed, but I could be wrong.

Behavior of productions currently and in the future undergoing the captioning process might be benefited.

That being said, the captions tonight were much better than the last several weeks - almost "regular".

By regular, I mean they still had a few gaps, but fewer of them. They were still behind the speaker, but not by a whole bunch.

Ris
 

Silverfox, we were told that Univision, due to money issues or the dispute they are having with Televisa, stopped buying the pre-made captions and started using on-the-fly captioners.
 

I may be wrong, but I believe "on the fly" means transcribing from the actual verbal performance of the actors while listening to them, and not from a script.

I suspect, but do not know for a certainty, that the captioning process would have been done for all shows of the series before the production was shown to Mexican viewers earlier.

That is what I meant by "in the can". That is, that the captions may already have been done before we seem the shows here in the US.

That is only conjecture on my part.

I don't mean not to register a complaint - in fact, I have registered mine and add it to the volume of complaints they must be getting.
 

By "on the fly" I meant that my informant suggested they have interns watching the show on tv and captioning as they go!
 

Silverfox, on the fly is our term, but "real-time captioned" is the technical term. The information we have is that Univision is using real-time captioners (possibly interns) so that WHEN the pre-recorded program from Mexico is aired in the US, they sit and listen and caption as it appears.

No, the captions do not appear to be pre-recorded. If so, they are among the worst pre-recorded captions I have ever seen in my 30 years of captioned television. Rather, they appear to be someone captioning who cannot keep up with the sound--i.e., a novice.

The captions you see on your screen are done specifically for US television. Caption technologies in your television are mandated by US law, and in the cases of most other countries, do not transfer. When a foreign television program is sold to a US station, it is the legal obligation of the US station to get the captions recorded or get them "performed" as they used to say in the old days, here, by US captioners. When Univision buys programming from Mexico, or Columbia, etc., then the program is captioned when it comes to the US.

Jeanne
 

I meant to add that it's also the obligation of a US network when a foreign program is purchased to broadcast network wide.

Jeanne
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Maybe Univision will offer our recappers translating jobs !!!!! They are the best !!!!
 

Hi Jeanne:

Well, this makes no sense to me, but I will take your word for it.

Since Televisa shows in Mexico before the US, and it surely must subtitle their Mexican broadcast; it seems rather inefficient to have Univision pay to do subtitles all over again in the same language. If Univision wanted to do English subtitles, as Telemundo does (or at least used to), I could see the sense of Univision doing those separately and bearing the extra cost.

Does this mean that the networks in each country of South America must separately pay for people to caption in Spanish in the same way, and can't simply use Televisa's Spanish subtitles used in Mexico?
 

Silverfox, I understand your thoughts--it doesn't make sense! But think of it this way: many countries used Beta recordings while others used VHS and they were incompatible technologies. It was goofy and so eventually all decided to use DVD, I guess.

The US caption law far outdates any other country's law. That is largely due to Senator Tom Harkin pushing like crazy to get it enacted; his older brother, Frank, was deaf and graduated from the Iowa School for the Deaf in 1940. This was the impetus for several pieces of legislation for individuals with disabilities that Sen. Harkin promoted and sponsored.

Other countries have lagged behind. What they do in Central and Latin America, I am unsure since I have not visited. Anyone? Has any commenter or recapper seen how or if they caption? Many countries do not mandate it--deafness is a very low incidence disability and often the deaf and hard of hearing population is overlooked in less progressive countries. In fact, the same NIDCD that Carlos consulted has a fact sheet on deafness that documents 1 in 1,000 children born deaf, or 2-3 born deaf or hard of hearing (the extra 1-2 have enough hearing to really benefit from amplification). This is one-tenth of one percent of the general population born deaf. Many become deaf as they age, of course; by age 65 314 out of 1,000 adults are deaf or hard of hearing. But the older folks learned language the easy way, with hearing.

Captions were originally funded entirely by the US Department of Education captioning program. Then, Sen. Harkin and his colleagues made sure with the CC law that captions would be the responsibility of the television networks broadcasting programs. But, it only applies to the US. Other countries may have their laws re: captioning, but many don't yet. Many may never. Don't get me started on how individuals who are born deaf or hard of hearing are treated in third world countries, or even other industrialized countries!

Jeanne
 

Here's another website I found that tells about closed captioning in Central/Latin America, again, sorry I cannot do a link like y'all can. No time to learn how!

The website states that all televisions after 1993 have decoder chips to show the captions, but I am pretty sure they misunderstood because that is not an international law, it's US law! So they've mixed their countries' regulations in the article online.

http://www.hear-it.org/page.dsp?page=4407

Mexico

In Mexico, the private Azteca America and Azteca 13 channels introduced closed captioning in 2005. This broadcast network offers real-time captioning for the main news and some entertaining shows. The goal is to increase the number of hours with closed captioning in the near future due to the demand of almost seven million Mexican viewers with hearing loss.

Jeanne
 

When I was in Costa Rica a few years ago I was surprised to see that on many shows there was a bubble in the corner of the screen with a person doing sign language! My hosts explained there is a surprisingly large population of congenitally deaf citizens in a certain part of the country. I'm assuming they are not all literate and so captions would not reach them.
 

Melinama, you assume correctly. There are many places (particularly small islands, such as Martha's Vineyard in the 1700s and the Ebeye Atoll in the Marshall Islands where small populations live, intermarry and don't travel outside the circle much, where genetic forms of deafness prevail. Also, there are many of these same pockets where school programs for deaf students don't exist. It seems to me it was Nicaragua where the native sign language was studied in the last few years, but it might have been Costa Rica. At any rate, the researchers discovered that the deaf folks had invented their own sign language--which is what hearing folks did historically to communicate in their local areas and why spoken languages are different from region to region.

Signs are the expressive language that precedes use of the written expressive language--and one must have a good vocabulary to read (including a good sign vocabulary). But, where there is sparse education, the interpreter in the circle can be accessed way better by the general deaf population of folks who don't read well.

Sign languages worldwide do not automatically translate to the exact grammar of the spoken languages for the countries, either. It takes really good teachers using very structured methods to teach the children how to make the grammatical switch mentally. That is why many teachers and experts in deaf education would rather the students use a form of sign language based on spoken language grammar (in the US, Signed English or several other variations). This is a longstanding pedagogical discussion and pretty boring to most folks. Why isn't it standardized? For the same reason that the entire world doesn't speak one language.

Jeanne
 

Jeanne/Schoolmarm:
You are a gem! Thank you for your generosity in writing up all this complicated stuff. The issues are much more far-reaching than I would have suspected from where I sit. It's clear you know much and care deeply about people with hearing loss.

And thank you Melinama and Carlos for making it so easy for us to weigh in with our complaints to Univision.
 

You're welcome, Agnes! You're right, I care deeply. I've had a number of relatives who are/were deaf over my lifetime, including an ex-husband, three aunts-in-law, a mother-in-law, and assorted more distant relatives. Plus, I've worked with deaf and deafblind kids for 35 years and have many deaf and deafblind adult friends.

Jeanne
 

Done and done! Thanks a mil to Carlos and Melinama! I wrote the following and grammar aside, hope they darned well get the idea ¡y punto!

Soy bloguera de telenovelas suyas y los traduzco para los anglohablantes. Desafortunadamente hoy por hoy sus subtítulos no funcionan adecuadamente. Nos vuelvan locos. ¡Qué los arreglen pronto! (I'm a blogger of your telenovelas and I translate them for English speakers. Unfortunately at the current time your captions aren't working properly. They're driving us crazy. Fix them fast!)
 

Schoolmarm: I am so happy to see you are still among us!!! As always, your backgrounders are enjoyable and informative ventures into alternate worlds to which I might never travel but for your carefully crafted roadmaps. Thanks, amiga, for enlightening me once again!
 

Hey Jeanne Schoolmarm:

Thanks for the info.

The world just keeps getting more and more confusing.
 

Jardinera, you're welcome, and thanks! It feels good to be back, if only briefly. I miss it but find my time is just gone as fast as it comes.

Silverfox, I agree. It always seems like they could just come up with simple solutions--but that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

I was watching stuff I recorded earlier in the week when I was out and about in the state visiting schools. The captions in some cases say exactly the opposite of what the character said, simply because the captioner missed a "no." One example: in Las Tontas, the Lucia character tells Charley his father loves him, and the captioner made her say "I love you." Other parts of her monologue to Charley were incorrect, as well. It makes the dialogue very unsatisfying for someone trying to follow both audio and captions--but the worst part is, why bother captioning if the captioner gets it completely backward? (FWIW, interpreters for the deaf do the same and it makes me nuts. I hate it when they miss what the deaf person really said and they say the opposite because they missed a small sign or a body language or facial nuance that is part of American Sign Language grammar and changes the meaning of the word.)

Jeanne
 

What does it take to just type a darned script verbatim and attach/reattach it to a video track at the correct place in the scene? If American kids can do this on their computers in Junior High, a company like Televisa/Univision could also.

All I know is that a couple weeks ago the first time there was a problem, the words "Test, Test" came up in English--of all things--on my Spanish CC1 and that's when the stuff started slowing down to a snail's pace, words and even whole sentences and speeches came up missing. Characters' whole conversations are being left out of scenes now, not just a sentence or two.

I just can't believe a corporation that huge and respected would change things overnight like this for "economic" reasons. That's hocum or rumor IMHO. They must have some more technical programming problems and whatever patches they put in there are not working well.
 

Wow, complaints may be working. I am watching Mariana de la Noche right now and the CCs are right on time. I hope it carries over into the night time shows as well!.
JeffMN
 

Oh, oh, looks like false hope on my part. Mariana's CCs were on time, but now Valeria has started and they are again on a delay. Mariana had been on a delay recently, so I was hoping for a wholesale change. Guess not. :-(
No idea what it will be like tonight.
JeffMN