Buenos Días Monsieur

Subtitling, dubbing and lipreading

After a quick trip through the options on TV the other night, Sue picked a repeat of ‘Qi’, one we hadn’t watched all the way through. After a long day Sue prefers something easy to read and watch. I’d chosen Ben Kane’s second volume of the ‘Forgotten Legion Chronicles’ – good read if you enjoy fictionalised Roman history but, due to adult language, not for young readers.

Reading with the TV on is easy for me, we just turn the sound off, but I did realise something about the sponsor adverts for a foreign language course that start and stop the ad breaks. I’d never really paid attention to the adverts as I already speak enough French to get by in this country and learning another language isn’t on Sue’s To Do list. But it dawned on me that, as the ad wasn’t subtitled, Sue didn’t have a clue what was happening.

Normally an advert is self-explanatory, but the language course features different people speaking languages different from what you’d expect, and, this is what’s confusing for the non-hearing viewer, making appropriate actions for that other language. That’s long winded, but I can’t think of a way to put it without possibly causing offence.

I asked Sue if she understood the ads, she didn’t and said they looked weird and were confusing as they seemed to be dubbed which ruled lipreading out. After I’d explained what the ads were about (and why they looked dubbed) Sue decided to determine what language was being spoken and, impressively, got most of them correct. I’m impressed she can discern the facial and lip movements of foreign languages.

I’d never considered that Sue might be in the slightest bit interested in anything as trivial as a TV ad – pause for massed intake of breath at advertising agencies – which meant I hadn’t realised that the things she doesn’t understand make her excluded. So it’s not just the big things in life that matter, Sue needs to know everything that she can’t hear rather than be left out. I’ll make sure to remember that in future. I don’t tell you this to make me seem considerate and compassionate, far from it, rather that there’s so much more I need to understand. And I’m not trying to appear humble either, I’m far too good for that!

Just enough space left to mention a radio interview with a professional photographer I heard a few years ago. The guest didn’t just travel alone to dangerous locations, she was Deaf and didn’t use an interpreter as she’d learnt to lipread many foreign languages. That alone was impressive, but what made me laugh – in a supportive way – was when she told how she’d sneaked out of a walled village in North Africa because she feared an uprising. She thought she’d been stealthy but had actually alerted the villagers by clanging the iron gates after her rucksack got caught. Sue cracked up as she had experienced similar (although non-life threatening) events.