Sunday 27 June 2010

Tennis with subtitles

When I got home from work yesterday I found our new TV had been delivered, and everything was functioning just fine. Somehow, between then and the start of Andy Murray's match at Wimbledon, we lost the sound. Oh, for the days when we had a volume knob on the TV which you could actually turn up and down without a 32 page manual to tell you how!

Scared to fiddle too much in case we lost the picture as well as the sound, I turned on the subtitles so at least we could see a little of the commentary. I am intrigued to know if the subtitles are done by some kind of voice recognition, because they had the air of predictive text messaging. Words - but not as we know them. For instance we had gems such as:

"A change of brackets."

"Dodging the smashing."

"Played a nervous shock."

The subtitles were refreshingly free in their use of exclamation marks! And did they mind using a question mark and an exclamation mark together?! No! I also noticed some of the commentators' remarks, which might normally have passed me by, were really quite poetic:

"The sun is setting on Simon's challenge."

And I liked how very few words could be used to convey a dramatic situation, which should be a lesson to those of us who like to flirt with flash fiction now and then:

"Umpire: game, set, match, Murray."

"CHEERING AND APPLAUSE!"

"His mum is thrilled."

Yes, I think sport with subtitles could become an interesting feature of my summer. Meanwhile, here is a photo of the prettiest bit of my garden at the moment. I'm calling it tea house corner.


11 comments:

larainydays said...

The shot of your garden corner is lovely. It is so hot and dry in Mesa, Arizona at the moment that there are only a few hardy flowers that can take the heat. I like the idea of subtitled sports watching. Most of the commentators are way over the top.

Joanna said...

Your garden corner is absolutely beautiful. I love 'the sun is setting on Simon's challenge' too.

Ellie Garratt said...

Subtitles can be amusing!

Beautiful picture of your garden corner. Is that a water feature in the corner?

joanne fox said...

Thank you all.

Gosh Laraine, I don't think I could cope with Arizona's heat and dryness.

Joanna, it's a nice line isn't it? I wish I'd written it myself!

Ellie, I do keep the blue dish filled with water, but it's not a water feature that does anything fancy. Now you've got me looking at it again I think it would be exciting if I could somehow get water squirting out of the tea house chimney to land in the dish. Hmm... how can I do that?

Old Kitty said...

Awww I love your little tea house corner!!! So pretty and lovely!

I watched the footie with the sound turned off on my pc (I was at work) and now am wondering how the commentating would have been as subtitles! LOL!!!

Oh I hope the BBC haven't resorted to predictive text?? LOL!!!

Good luck with finding the volume to your new tv! I do know what you meant though - knobs really had their uses. :-)

Take care
x

Unknown said...

Subtitles can be hilarious. I was watching a tabloid type news show at the gym, and they always have the subtitles on. They talked about Sandra Bullock's husband and his affair. They said that he had placed an ad in some biker magazine for a "Biker babe with big books". I about fell off the elliptical laughing so hard. Was he really looking for a studious hot biker chick? Or one with big boobs? hehe

joanne fox said...

Hi Old Kitty. Yes we did get the sound back late on Saturday night, so order was restored ahead of the England game. Bet that match would have produced some great subtitles!

Mary, I love the 'big books'!

Bob said...

This is an amusing post. We've all been there....baffled by the instruction manual.

joanne fox said...

Yes - who writes those instruction manuals? Robots, perhaps.

Margo Berendsen said...

This is funny! Who would have thought we writers could learn from subtitles! (from sports events, no less)

I love your garden picture. I found my way over here from a mention about the Wednesday Words, what a fun exercise!

joanne fox said...

Many thanks for visiting Margo. The Word Pool Wednesday challenge is great isn't it.