Gallaudet University is the world's only liberal arts university for the deaf and hard of hearing. And Rosemary Bennett is its senior captioner. She captions the university's productions and educational videos. She checks all the captioning that goes out of the office.
With all those responsibilities, what does Bennett believe are important skills for closed captioning? "Excellent English skills and a large vocabulary. The more reading and the more education, the better," she says.
"Typing skills are not as critical for an offline captioner. Typing speed or even accuracy isn't as important as knowing how to spell a very wide variety of obscure words, recognizing obscure names, places and terminology, and being able to find your mistakes and correct them. You need to pay great attention to detail."
Closed captioners do much more than simply add captions to videos. "A captioner's job is to look up names and terms, translate incomprehensible dialog and understand regional or ethnic speech patterns. We also move the captions to follow the speakers around the screen and out of the way of graphics. We decide how to describe sounds and which sounds to caption," Bennett explains.
Captioning is done with special software on a normal PC. A time code reader card is inserted into the CPU of the computer. A serial port connects it to a videotape player. Once the transcript is ready and formatted, the captioner plays the tape and hits a key at the beginning of the particular caption. Then they move the caption around the screen.
Bennett believes certification will eventually be a requirement for closed captioners. "I think there will be a certification in the future, but not this year, for offline captioners."
Kevin Daniel is a captioner in San Francisco. He also believes in the need for a certification program for captioners. He's even lobbied the National Court Reporters Association to create a specific exam to test captioning skills.
"To date, the NCRA hasn't felt that the demand for such an exam justifies the expense and energy to create it. Ask the deaf community if they feel a need for captioning certification."
There are several wrong reasons to get into the field. One is because you can't make it through court reporting school. "Captioning is far more difficult than any other branch of court reporting. If you can't get legal proceedings verbatim, don't even consider captioning."
And don't go into captioning just because you've always wanted to be on TV. "While it's exciting to see your work appear on the TV screen in front of hundreds of thousands of people, it's nerve-wracking. Any glamour associated with the work is overshadowed by the stress, hard work and preparation required to put out a good broadcast," says Daniel.
Maybe you've heard you'll make a lot of money. "Captioning pays a living wage if you're good and can find the work, but court reporting is far more lucrative than captioning. Most captioners make less than when they were court reporters," Daniel explains.
To captioner Max Duckler of Minnesota, a career as a closed captioner isn't just a writing job. "It's a job of making a program understandable to deaf and hard of hearing people," he says.
"Captioners should have esthetic sense, common sense, be good with computers, have a good sense of timing and possess a desire to get better and faster at what they do. People who are hard on themselves but have a good sense of humor do really well. People looking for a 'job' do lousy."
Duckler offers this piece of advice. "Always keep in mind that you're communicating to a deaf audience. Describe what's going on. If you hear a hilarious laugh, you need to describe it."
A career as a closed captioner is fun and educational. "You learn new words or points of grammar every day, and learn things about the videos you're captioning. Our captioners do a lot of research, both on the Internet and in our own library."
What type of equipment do captioners use? "The two main pieces of equipment captioners use are a stenograph machine and a computer," captioner Mary Shewchuk says. "All other equipment needs depend on what type of job you're captioning."
Captioning can be taught on the job. Or it can be part of the curriculum in court reporter programs. To work as a captioner takes more than education, though. "I must point out that I feel it takes some years of work experience as a shorthand writer before a person is confident enough to actually do captioning," says Shewchuk.
But after gaining that valuable experience, the career is deeply satisfying. "Captioning is a great career because of its diversity. But be prepared to spend time researching and fine-tuning your shorthand skills. Some captioning employers require a written knowledge test and a captioning test of prospective applicants!"