i think censoring subtitles is actually ableism
When I took ASL classes, my teacher explained that interpreters should interpret EVERYTHING, including slurs and things that they’d normally be uncomfortable saying. She said something along the lines of “deaf people have the right to swear.” I think that applies to what they’re allowed to see as well.
Why shouldn’t deaf people be able to fully express themselves and consume media the same way a hearing person can? If everything you watched had random bleeps every time there was a swear word, you’d be annoyed, so why are deaf people not receiving the same consideration?
It's like they assume deaf people can't handle seeing these words.
Youtube always does a [_____] when a word like 'fuck' or 'shit' is said.
I've lost count of how many times I was watching a film on tv as a kid, or even a film on prime where they will write 'shoot' instead of 'shit' or 'screw' instead of 'fuck.'
This still happens, by the way. Very regularly. The last film I watched on Prime, the subs said 'darn,' instead of 'damn' and 'oh no' instead of 'shit.'
Oh, the worst one I saw- instead of 'get fucked,' it was 'get stuffed.'
please stop treating me like a child.
Even when I WAS a child, I still deserved to see 'damn' when a character said 'damn.'
I actually just watched a video about this from an interpreter who was advising learning interpreters to "interpret the fart."
in other words, an ASL interpreter is there to present the scene exactly as it happens to a deaf audience. therefore if the hearing audience can hear the fart, the deaf audience should too.
(she also brought up the inherent ableism in farting in front of a deaf person assuming you'd be able to get away with it.)
so yeah i wholeheartedly agree. subtitles should not be censored. Image IDs for screen readers should not be censored. There's probably a whole host of scenarios I can't think of where censorship is an option, and one should choose censorship in none of them.
One has a duty to present oneself the same way to a disabled person as one does an abled person.
Update, for at least the videos I’ve been watching. YouTube is no longer writing [_____] when a word like fuck is said.
They are giving no indication in the caption whatsoever that words they don’t like are being said. It skips over them. There’s no space, there’s no indication that they’ve been censoring a word. It just carries on from the previous “acceptable” word to the next “acceptable” word. No space to tell you that they have just censored something.
If you are for example profoundly deaf, and you happen to blink at that moment, or the camera is off the person who’s just said the offending word, you don’t know the word was said. There’s no indication that they have censored something. I’m quite certain this is extremely intentional.
I think this is dodgy as hell.
But as I posted yesterday, the UK is trying to force YouTube to prioritise content that is approved by the UK government because people have stopped watching BBC. Personally, I find this incredibly Orwellian and dangerous. It’s bad enough that they censor disabled people. It’s bad enough that they treat us like we are children who cannot handle these big scary words like fuck.
But now the UK is pushing to sensor YouTube even more. This is a fucking problem.
reblogging on the occasion of watching something on netflix where the subs made fuck into something like făăk
