Friday, October 21, 2005

"Sewnny?"

I was watching "The Apprentice" on Thursday night, and as usual, I had the closed captioning script on. My hearing is a little less than normal, so I run the script so that I can make sure not to miss anything, and the other(s) in the house will not have to tolerate high volume.

I am constantly amazed at the horrible spelling I see on nearly every program I watch. I will grant that it has to be typed on the spot, as the program is happening, but couldn't they find someone to do it who understands syntax and can spell (and type) fairly well? The errors I notice are not mere typing mistakes, but misunderstandings and poor spelling. One would think that given the delay in showing the program, the errors could be repaired before the show appears on TV.

The Sony Corporation was sponsoring this show's focus, a new and as yet unreleased movie called "Zathura". Would you believe that the first time the company name appeared on the screen it was spelled "Sewnny"? I almost laughed myself out of the chair! Just what do you imagine the Sony executives might have been thinking as they viewed this? They were so interested in having the public be aware of the name of the movie; what would they do if they knew the name of their company was being butchered on national TV? It boggles the mind!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello! Michele sent me! Love your quote under your blog's title. Have a great weekend! :)

srp said...

You don't suppose they have one of those voice recognition programs doing it. I know the foreign language translation programs really butcher words. It is funny, I was trying to pronounce Sewnny.

Karen Townsend said...

Swenny! Good one. Thanks for posting the nice comment for my story on The Dew!

Zee said...

Too funny!

Thumper said...

i Sware it wuzn't mee dewing thu clothesed kaptionink!

Peter said...

Reminds me of my little poem, my spelling checka tole me sew.

rashbre said...

In UK Sony anso make their cheaper brand under the name Aiwa. I wonder what your CC friends would make of that?

Dropping by today via Michele!

rashbre

ribbiticus said...

i should try turning on the captions myself! thanks for the great idea. :)

here via michele today.

Paul Nichols said...

If I had seen that, it would have had me laughing in stitches. And I'll bet the Sony execs split their britches...

We could have fun with this one, eh?

Anonymous said...

I would think in this day of technology it might be a voice recognition software doing the closed captioning. I might be wrong though.

mw said...

I love it - I wonder about spelling in general. The vast majority of blogs are studies in creative spelling, even with blogspot having a reasonably decent spell checker.

Having read Meriweather Lewis's journals and tons of blogs, I wonder if agreement on the common spelling of a word isn't just a transient phenomena of the late 20th century...

Good to read you Kenju - take care.

mw

P.S. Michele sent me...

brendalove@gmail.com said...

Judy - I have noticed this too on the several occasions I have watched closed captioning. All I can imagine is my 8th grade English teacher and how it must be so hard for her to deal with such atrocities in this day and age!

Jennifer said...

I'm deaf, so I keep the closed captioning on ALL the time. Some of their goof-ups crack me up!!

Beanhead said...

Here from Michele's

You would think that they would use some of that "sewnny" money to hire people that can type.

sage said...

My guess is to blame the spelling on voice recognition. Especially since the spelling has seemlingly gotten worse in the last year or so. Years ago I would be reading the words in bars--watching some game--and the sound was turned down so they could play music. Today, I only read them in the gym. Maybe my setting has something to do with me noticing the misspelled words--I don't think my spelling has improved any (and it's never been anything I'd brag about).

Weary Hag said...

Oh my god oh my god I totally love it! I don't use the closed captioning but sometimes while watching the news on CNN or Fox I'll read the headlines down below as they scroll them across and there are so many typos it's incredible! Sometimes they're downright embarrassing and you can tell how many calls they got on them because they fix them very quickly - others, not so fast.