This weekend I had the privilege of attending a wedding where the bride is hearing and the groom is deaf. It was very interesting to watch them communicate with each other. She even serenaded him by “signing” a love song. I was questioned a lot about my job as a caption editor and was asked why captions aren’t always accurate. The couple was watching a sitcom together and some of the jokes lost their humor due to the fact that the captions were severely edited down and not verbatim. I discussed the importance of verbatim captioning and how at Aberdeen we make it our priority to provide accurate, verbatim captioning that does not deter from the original meaning. It was a personal moment for me to take pride in my professional career but also sad to see that many programs still have poor captioning that barely meets the requirements. Hopefully this will change as awareness spreads on the importance of quality captioning.
Side note: I was very embarrassed by my own personal lack of sign language and was frustrated that I was not able to communicate as well as I would have liked. I think it is important that everyone knows at least a few fundamental and basic signs. Here is a website that provides a list of some common signs that you should know: http://www.start-american-sign-language.com/basic-words-in-sign-language.html.
