Today is Read Captions Across America Day! This is a great initiative set up by the Described and Captioned Media Program to encourage people to turn on the closed captioning when watching television for the educational benefit of reading and improved literacy:
What captioned media would you choose to watch? The DCMP has a library of content available online Be sure also to check out Book Box which specialises in animated stories with subtitles to improve language and literacy skills which are posted to You Tube:
Sharing this amusing video found on another WordPress blog. It is a collection of music videos edited together and subtitled to its misheard lyrics. Who hasn’t misheard a lyric or two? (There is also a website dedicated to this very subject). A warning, it might be difficult to “un-hear” these lyrics once you’ve watched the video!
Music Monday #73
Misheard song lyrics. Some are better than others and there are a few where I thought the subtitles were the real lyrics anyway (I’m not the best when it comes to stuff like that) Read More
Sticking with ‘fun’ and moving on to K-Pop. Is there anyone who hasn’t seen or heard Gangnam Style yet? It’s interesting that a music video has become the most liked You Tube video according to the Guiness Book Of Records, and has gone on to win Best Video at the 2012 MTV Europe Music Awards. Perhaps because music is universal? Or in this particular case, maybe its just the dance move! Despite that, if like me your Korean isn’t up to scratch and you are curious about the lyrics, how about watching subtitled translation? Viki has 23 language translations available here.
Whilst on the subject of music, I recently added a link to my blogroll on the right hand side —> to a blog dedicated to subtitled music videos to use as an educational resource. It’s called Music English and has a decent collection of accurately subtitled music videos to choose from which is growing all the time. I have contributed by subtitling some music videos myself using Amara (previously called Universal Subtitles). If this is something that appeals to any readers why not join the Music Captioning team. At some point I may collate the videos I have subtitled and share them here but you can find most of them on the aforementioned blog. And as a final note to this blog entry, I am really pleased to see what looks like a screenshot of upcoming Coldplay DVD menu, and it has subtitles! (Incidently one of the music videos I have subtitled is a Coldplay song)
Subtitles are generally used to provide accurate translations, but take a look at how the creative use of subtitling films is being used by one English language teacher in an education setting to both inform and entertain. Love it!
In addition to writing materials and teaching, some of you may already be familiar with my subtitling work. Around a year or so ago I discovered Overstream, a great site which allows you to add subtitles to any video you want. Of course, there are good pedagogical uses you could put this to. You could also use this medium to create funny little videos about what goes on in English language teaching and the ELT blogosphere. Here then, are my six s … Read More
Last week I went to the Natural History Museum and was pleased to see that although not all, many of the video screens for the exhibits had subtitles available. Great stuff. Here’s an example of a straight audio translation:
Not only that but some of the screens were using animated text to add a bit of vibrance to the content being discussed. It totally caught my attention and I learned something new in the process. Here’s an example:
I look forward to sharing any more examples I come across.
So how many of you like karaoke? It tends to divide people. I love it so long as you are allowed to sing as badly as you are enthusiastically as that is the only kind I can do. This in itself is a type of subtitling. If you are someone who enjoys it then The Karaoke Channel Online might be of interest to you. (it is a little bit US artists biased – where are the Take That songs? ahem moving on…) You probably don’t need an example, but here is one anyway:
But here is what else I’ve discovered – if you needed an excuse to do it – karaoke might actually be educational – refered to as Same Language Subtitling (SLS) – using this subtitling technique has increased literacy rates and is being promoted as an educational tool. Don’t believe me? Here’s President Clinton talking about it:
That’s some pretty impressive statistics right? So why isn’t this being used everywhere for educational purposes? I wonder if we will see more use in an educational setting. For more information make sure you visit the website SLS4Reading which contains much more information than I could reproduce here including more examples and research papers on the topic.
If this isn’t proof that subtitling is not just for deaf and hard of hearing people but for everyone, I don’t know what isn’t.
Edit: I had totally forgotten about this brilliant comedy sketch that is relevant (sort of) to this post. Thanks to @MsPandora39 for reminding me! You don’t need to know any correct form of sign language to understand this translation for the deaf of Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’ Enjoy!
To begin with ,you have created a very nice theme . I think i might design something similar for a future project that i want to build . In addition ,i honestly enjoy most of the articles and your different point of view. Cheers
Thanks Greg. And thank you also for subscribing. I plan to keep this blog as entertaining as I can Please spread the word if you think others will enjoy reading it.
Whilst setting up this blog I have subscribed to various tags to see who else on WordPress is talking about subtitling and captioning. In doing so I was pleased to see that Exit Languages based in Barcelona have seen the benefits subtitling can provide to learning a second language. They pointed me to another online resource for subtitled movies which if you are a pop culture junkie like me will find useful. The site is Subtitled Trailers. Subtitles are available in English, Italian and French. I look forward to finding out what else I can find from tag subscribing I have many more resources I have found to add to the links list here also.
I’m a special education teacher in Hawaii, and very interested in subject of literacy. A few years ago I came across a very simple idea for improving the literacy amongst struggling reader populations. (In reality the majority of USA High School students are ‘struggling readers with Reading below 7th Grade Equivalencies)
The format is called Same-Language-Subtitling (SLS). SLS is the use of Synchronized Captioning of Musical Lyrics (or any text with an Audio/Video/ source) as a Repeated Reading activity.
The application has many possibilities in both television and in education.
This approach to enriching reading is legitimate –Google gave a 25 million dollar grant to the India based study: http://planetread.org/home.php and the OLPC program has a version of program with music pre-loaded on their laptops.
This format includes not only the viewing and responding to subtitled media but also the opportunity for students to design and create their own surtitled projects. For class activities we use a free program called Karafun (www.karafun.com) My students really love it, it is easy, intuitive, and can use any mp3, jpeg, or even .avi to rapidly make dynamic syllabicated subtitling. My students also use it with poetry and famous speech.
You can see samples of my student’s karaoke projects at my study web site: http://www.sls4reading.com, just look for SLS samples: Musicals and Other Genres.
To begin with ,you have created a very nice theme . I think i might design something similar for a future project that i want to build . In addition ,i honestly enjoy most of the articles and your different point of view. Cheers