As a child growing up in a deaf family, I remember when subtitling was so scarce we scheduled our Christmas viewing around the programmes that had it. Nowadays we are shocked if they don't – though the quality varies hugely.
Deaf people love prerecorded subtitles – these have been carefully done before transmission and appear in time with the programme. Live subtitles are a different story. They are made by a stenographer typing words phonetically as they listen to a show, or with speech recognition, where someone talks into a microphone while listening to the broadcast, and a computer recognises their words.
It is the latter version that leads to the use of words that sound similar to the intended one, but give a very different meaning. During the Queen Mother's funeral, the solemn words "We'll now have a moment's silence for the Queen Mother" were said to have become "We'll now have a moment's violence for the Queen Mother."
Last week, during an item on BBC Breakfast about breeding pigs, a roving reporter explained to the presenter that pigs "love to nibble anything that comes into the shed, like our wellies". Unfortunately, the computer heard pigs "love to nibble anything that comes into the shed, like our willies". I took a picture on my iPhone and uploaded it on to Twitter. It has been viewed thousands of times since. BBC Breakfast even joined in, retweeting it to its followers and posting it on its Facebook page.
But there is a serious side to subtitling mistakes – how many deaf kids setting off on farm visits are not going to want to visit the pig enclosure now?
