A Rant About Closed Captions

 On John Scalzi's Whatever blog, his daughter Athena has published a rant about subtitles (actually closed captions) and how awful they are on HBO's latest hit show, The Last of Us.

I, like many others, have been watching The Last of Us on HBO Max. I have also been watching it with subtitles, and I’m shocked at how garbage they are. You would think that such a huge, expensive, and widely-anticipated show would cater better to its subtitle-using audience, but you’d be severely disappointed.

What do I mean by “bad” subtitles, though? How can subtitles be bad, and what would good ones look like? I’m glad you asked! I was frustrated by the subtitles for The Last of Us, because they left out entire words on several occasions, they don’t indicate who is speaking, or in what tone anyone says anything, they don’t include things like sighing, gasping, exclaiming, or include any background conversation. They also include no SFX, which means no “monster screeching”, “zombie clicking”, “guns shooting”, “explosions”! How are you going to leave out the zombie noises entirely, in a zombie show?!

I am totally with her on this. 

I don't usually have closed captioning turned on as we don't watch a lot of non-English-language shows or movies, but there are some shows where I need them (Scottish accents, for example). Our TV is a decent size (55") but I'm nearsighted so I need large captions. And not every site or service lets you customize them.

Because I am nearsighted, for closed captions I like a large yellow sans-serif font on a black background. YouTube is good. For example. I like a large san-serif font in yellow with a black background. Amazon Prime has good settings although setting things up online doesn't seem to carry over to the app. I have the same problem with Netflix. Crave seems to be OK when I view it on the phone but I can't find a setting to change it.

Athena's other points are good. I don't generally need the character name in the caption but it's nice to have. Many shows don't leave them up on screen long enough. I can understand that when the dialogue is fast-paced, but often there are pauses after a character speaks that would allow for a longer delay.

Subtitles, which appear when a character speaks in a foreign language, are another matter. Most of them are awful. Star Trek Discovery is my prime example. The subtitles when Klingons speak are all caps in a florid font that is almost impossible to read. Subtitles and captions should NEVER be in all caps. Drop shadows are also bad, especially if they just overlay the film or show's background.