Interesting video added to caption requested. The Blind/Deaf way

[Booger Bender]

http://www.amara.org/en/videos/wwjjnjkMIK9v/info/welcome-to-pro-tactile-the-deafblind-way/

I encourage anyone with sign language skills to interpret this. This is also very educational and cool to see blind/deaf people speaking so freely and happy. I see no disability here just the rise of ability. Enjoy.

[Claude Almansi]

Great video indeed, Dylan, thanks! In the description, they give an
e-mail address for requesting a transcript: have you already written
to them? Subtitling would be way easier with this transcript: it would
just need to be synced. But it'd be a pity to bother them with
multiple requests.

Best,

Claude

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[Shelly Hansen]

Hmm...this is interesting. I post vlogs often in ASL...I choose which ones I want to caption and which ones I don’t.  Sometimes I intentionally do not want it captioned.  Is that not part of the artistic expression of the poster to not have it in English?

 

Curious...

 

SH

 

 

I have not yet emailed them for transcript. What I wanted to do was work hard at getting people who are savvy to sign language to help join our team. This weekend I'm going to be broadcasting and telling people about Amara and the new addition of asl and blind/deaf videos. I'm also looking into blind braille subtitling. so more interesting things should be appearing here sometime.

best, Dylan

[Booger Bender]

Dear Shellium,

Thanks for writing. Very good question. The reason I encourage ASL videos to be captioned is the same reason Deaf people request captions on hearing videos. Hearing folks are curious and want to know what people say in ASL. Also we have non-signing Deaf folks who wish to watch ASL videos and understand as well. Hence the purpose of my projects here. I'm Deaf myself and I sign, I have a difficult time translating as because, I do not have the experience nor skill to properly translate. However, I fully encourage people to do so.  I also understand why some Deaf prefer to not have ASL captioned because of the translation conflict as well it's not the same. For instance, Deaf comedy translated into English isn't as funny as the original language. That being said, The purpose is to share culture and that's exactly what Amara is all about. sharing culture worldwide without any discretion. Everyone should be able to enjoy media. If we had segregated things then it would seem hypocritical. So, all due respects, Captions should be allowed on any video one requests captions for. ;)
best,
Booger Bender

[Shelly Hansen]

Hi BB ;o)

Hmm....have you had any feedback from people asking you to respect the content in their videos and not caption without permission?

Wondering...

Also, what recourse does a poster have if the captioning is erroneous?

Can authors select which languages their writings become translated into?

SH

[Booger Bender]

Shellium,

I not once had anyone object to any of our video linking. As standard practice we encourage contacting the original uploaders of submissions for permission. We haven't had anyone have problems with it. We always respond accordingly if there was any problem. That's what this group page is for and what my admins are for. The true goal ultimately is to share culture. If people do not wish to share their content freely they can request a takedown pretty simple. So far as I can recall we have not had one takedown request since we started this. We have had erroneous subtitles before and we have them either corrected or maintained. We haven't had much problem with captioning here as since most people who sign up here agree with the terms upon joining. Above all Amara respects wishes of original content ownership as well uploader's requests. By default our system is set up so that any video can be translated into any existing language. authors can caption themselves or allow crowdsource captioning. If there was any problems we are here to help and solve them.
best,
BB

[Shelly Hansen]

One more comment...Anyone can enjoy the media without captions...enjoyment isn’t dependent entirely on a word by word translation.  I can watch something in another sign language and enjoy the beauty of the expression without a transcript.

Just throwing that out there since there is a difference between enjoying and captioning.

Anyone captioning someone like Ridor 9th? ;o)  Those kinds of postings might be expecting anonymity from the world at large...

SH

[Booger Bender]

Shellium,

The greatest thing about Amara how we have this set up is for everyone. Those who wish to not watch captions can simply turn them off of course. Language is an important act of culture exchange. without culture exchange there's a gap in comprehension. Without word by word translation effectively you wouldn't be sharing. Exclusivity no longer applies in the modern internet anymore it has become a dinosaur way of thinking. Today culture is shared worldwide in every language possible. This is critical to education with precision. Without that there isn't much to understand is there? :)

[Claude Almansi]

Hi Shelly,

Thank you for raising this point of artistic freedom. About spoken
videos - well, the kind of rule of thumb is, if people don't want
their videos captioned on Amara or another subtitling platform
(DotSUB, Subtitle Horse), then all they have to do is disable
embedding, because what happens on these platforms is that the
original video gets embedded in a player, then folks create
subtitles/captions that are overlaid over the video

So conversedly, if authors of spoken videos don't disable embeds, it
is assumed that they're OK with any kind of embed, including in a
subtitling platform, where the subs can also be turned off, and won't
affect the original video.

HOWEVER, an objection to captioning from authors of signed videos
would be more important, I feel, if captions interfere with the
signs. i.e. though the counterobjection that subtitles can be switched
off and don't affect the original video still holds, hiding what is
signed is a far more serious issue than some hearing aesthetes'
allergy to captions on spoken videos.

LOL; I'm already 3 messages behind in this thread: I see Dylan
confirms the argument that captions can be turned off.

Better send this now, though,

Claude

[Booger Bender]

Thanks Claude for your quick reply in detail. I have had people write to me and tell me how silly captioning is and why should it exist. What people need to understand is that the benefits of culture sharing outweighs exclusivity.


On Friday, February 15, 2013 4:55:55 PM UTC-5, Claude Almansi wrote:

Hi Shelly,

.....

[Claude Almansi]

Hi Shelly

About:

On Fri, Feb 15, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Shelly Hansen wrote:
> Hi BB ;o)
> Hmm....have you had any feedback from people asking you to respect the
> content in their videos and not caption without permission?
> Wondering...
> Also, what recourse does a poster have if the captioning is erroneous?
> Can authors select which languages their writings become translated into?
> SH
>

Dylan already replied there have been no such request so far. But if
an author wanted to make such a request, s/he could, as explained in
section "7. Digital Millennium Copyright Act" of the Terms of Use
<http://www.amara.org/en/terms>.

And I'm glad you raise the issue of erroneous captions: that happens,
yes: then the author could leave a comment in the captions page, or
contact the captioner via Amara messaging. More often, it's other
Amara users who spot the problem. As happened in the case of not
erroneous, but vandalizing the Amara Spanish subs on PSY's "Gangnam
Style" video, just before Xmas. But again, it did not affect the
YouTube original.

Now if PSY had enacted the "Connect / Sync to YouTube" feature
presently promoted on Amara, these vulgarly vandalized subs would have
been automatically transfered to the YouTube video. He didn't and so
far there has been no complaint on the help forum of original videos
thus vandalized via this Syncing (only deletion requests from people
who didn't realize the syncing would create Amara pages for ALL their
YT videos). But it might happen - yet if it should, that would be the
responsibility of the YT channel owner who did accept Amara's
permission request to do that.

Best,

Claude

[Booger Bender]

I have not yet emailed them for transcript. What I wanted to do was work hard at getting people who are savvy to sign language to help join our team. This weekend I'm going to be broadcasting and telling people about Amara and the new addition of asl and blind/deaf videos. I'm also looking into blind braille subtitling. so more interesting things should be appearing here sometime.

best, Dylan

[Claude Almansi]

Hi Dylan

Some people just don't understand how closed captions work, i.e. that
you can show or not show them, contrary to open captions that are
burned into the video, and thus always show.

In my experience, though, once you explain the switching off
possibility, even the most stubborn narrow-minded "cinephiles" who
object to captions "distracting them from the visual content" usually
relent: particularly if you ask them if they object to DVDs offering
closed captions too.

But yes, I've occasionally asked for permission for subtitling even
spoken videos, when the copyright situation was obviously complex, as
for " Namaste - Le voyage d'Alexandre Jollien - Terre des hommes"
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccJb2PwOXq8>: though the video was
commissioned - and posted on YT - by the humanitarian organization
Terre des Hommes, its copyright belonged to the film maker. So I made
the French and English subs privately on DotSUB, then sent them to
Terre des Hommes, asking if they'd add the subs to the YT original, if
it was OK with the film maker - which they happily did.

Yet I think Shelly's remarks don't only or mainly stem from an
exclusive concept of author's rights. More as an expression of
irritation against caption requests from hearers who could darned well
learn to understand what is signed if they're so curious / nosy.

And at times we hearers can be bloody indiscreet. Thinking of the
Italian TV RAI's video about empowering intitiatives for / by the deaf
community, <http://www.amara.org/en/videos/88c5jDgFcy2t/info/lintervista-in-diretta-al-presidente-nazionale-giuseppe-petrucci/>.
In the first part about the Bologna bar where Italian Sign Language
(LIS) is the official language, while someone is saying something in
spoken Italian to the journalist, and is interpreted in LIS in the
small window, the camera wanders off and picks up fragments of signed
conversations between customers. I mean, for hell's sake, RAI
journalists would not dream of thus publishing the audio of private
spoken conversations!

Best,

Claude