I’ve mentioned before that I don’t know how the autosubtitling of television programs works, but it’s obviously not using basic procedures to check spelling, grammar and collocation.
Last night’s efforts included:
bolsleigh for bobsleigh (spelling).
They’re second Olympics. By itself, there’s nothing to choose between they’re and their (and there). They’re second will pass a grammar check, but They’re second Olympics can only be Their. (grammar)
immortal iced for immortalised. Adjective + V-pp is ungrammatical in English, unless the V-pp is being used as an adjective – our immortal iced coffee. (collocation)
iced hockey and sore monies (ceremonies) (collocation). Both of these are grammatical, but an online search shows exactly zero occurrences of each. There are two occurrences of sore money, both of which are misprints.
There’s obviously a dictionary of some sort. The commentators mentioned someone with a very long French name. After a few moments the correct name came up. On the other hand, the Gangneung Ice Arena was rendered as Quandong (an indigenous Australian fruit).
Sometimes everything and everyone just gives up. At the closing ceremony, children from two local elementary schools, which the commentators named, carried the South Korean flag. The auto-subtitling simply said Children from elementary schools.
I could turn off the auto-subtitling. Or turn off the television, which is very likely now that the winter olympics have finished.
Never Pure and Rarely Simple 
I’ve heard these same complaints about closed captioning from my sister-in-law, who is almost completely deaf. I noticed it myself while watching the Olympics while working out at the gum. I wonder if other countries, who speak other languages, have a similar problem.
LikeLike