Words matter, in a world of silence. What an experience. Talk about an eye-opening, paradigm shift.  Less that three days ago now I was editing a video posted to YouTube.  At some point I somehow turned on the Closed Captions.  Not sure how.  Doesn’t matter. Here is what does.

I was ignoring them. Then I noticed “…morons…” in one of the captions on screen.  I don’t use the word “morons” so that got my curiosity up.  I watched more of the captions and was surprised how inaccurate it could be. That led me to discover that the captions had been automatically generated.  I also discovered that I could edit them to correct the mistakes.

Once I figured out how to make the edits, I thought I’d pick a short video and give it a try. That is when the paradigm shift happened. It was late at night, no sounds in the house or outside.  As I was reading them I was drawn into a world of total silence. Imagining that I could hear nothing and that I depended on the words I’m reading to be accurate.  Not leave anything out.  It would be the only way I would get anything out of, or make sense of the video.

Thinking about that stuck me. Imagine trying to follow along with the video, and have to watch the video and read along but the words you are reading are wrong or missing. It’s like having subtitles in a language you don’t understand. Useless!

It suddenly became a top priority to go back through all of the videos I’ve posted and edit the closed captions. There were so many mistakes. It’s not surprising with all the slang and my accent. I’ll bet that’s why YouTube doesn’t like some of my videos, the auto generated text.

Still not caught up, the project has taken hours and is committed to editing all of our videos with relevant audio. A number of the mistakes are saved below. Some of the best ones aren’t here because I didn’t think of writing this blog until I was a few hours into the project.

Many of them, funny, simple mistakes. Others, complex misinterpretations. Wait until you read them. Some of them will require reading over a few times to comprehend the misquote like this one. “Honey that stools that seat in there is trying to germinate well, okay” – “Okay, that soil, that seed in there is trying to germinate.” The misquote, then the correction. See what I mean?

Read on for a laugh or two, but remember what its like to have to read through it and try to have the same video experience everyone that has hearing does. That was an eye-opening experience, we’ll never again post a video without checking the closed captions. I might make a video to challenge others who post videos to do the same. We’ll see. -13

“morons” – “more worms”

“poop” – “boop”

“cuite 13” – “unit 13”

“that’s full arms” – “it’s gonna be full of worms”

“the Salil” – “the soil”

“Watch the side. Oh my god. Let’s beat this thing” – “Where is the photo, there we go. (phone sound) Alright let’s feed this thing in.”

“here because well, that’s all of that’s why they haven’t eaten it” – “And then this is all that’s left of those”

“Only probably swimming around in there.” – “roly pollies running around in there.”

“I’m not sort of reading in there…” – “…not sure if they’re breeding in there…”

“…in Chi 213…” – “…it’s unit 13…”

“pattern not sure” – “pattern notcher”

“at least to care gotchas” – “at least two tear notches”

“Like this that came sailor” – “I like this vacuum sealer”

“pantry” – “can’t read”

“Tell me it’s gonna take more time to get it just sexually this” – “…it’s just fine with me, it’s gonna take more time to get, get to the suction. ”

“social essentially” – “starts drawing suction”

“All this right” – “Harbor freight…”

“other ponies” – “roly polies”

“they ate those still smiling sit up hitting there” – “…those small one’s I put in there.”

“That was Laura” – “Those are.”

“thus you entertain up” – “this is unit 13 I’m out”

“steal hair” – “still here”

“What am I big man office?” – “Running my big mouth.”

“You see me that was a load” – “Please tell me that wasn’t a roach.”

“Yeah all the rooms empty” – “See all them worms?”

“All right start releasing it down technically I’m doing this” – “All right start rinsing it down, changing the way I’m doing this.”

“Tanka in three” – “There you go, bin 3”

“Wow, okay. Well Chrome the top of that looks” – “Wow, look how well groomed the top of that looks!”

“Cutting out and lift this onion and we’ll be there secrets the blender there” – “Okay now, we’ll lift this onion, and we’ll be able to see what’s under there.”

“been to work” – “dental work”

“nacho” – “notcher”

“the Vienna” – “the bin.”

“Well, hey, we’re Meg. I” – “um, a, worm egg.”

“spell it up” – “sprout up.”

“art forms” – “earthworms”

“beans” – “bins”

“dive ads” – “dye vats”

“high poly” – “iDye Poly”

“flux to weigh it ” – “fluctuate”

“jogging” – “dyeing”

“Washington” – “washing in”

“fundos” – “photos”

“tree firm” – “transfer”

“impacting” – “thin padding”

“went and tell the dive at ” – “went into the dye vat”

“hidden it set” – “head net set”

“many Flair kids” – “mini flare kits”