Karaoke and SLS

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!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH WITH SUBTITLES.