A couple of days ago I saw a diary here that queried whether Obama's Inaugural address would be carried with live sub-titles by the US networks. Now speaking from a UK perspective it seems a strange question - over here sub-titles are considered a standard facility in television programming even for live shows and news bulletins so there would be no question they would be available for such an historical event (and I've no doubt that BBC and Sky coverage will have this option available to their viewers on the day).
But what you may not appreciate is how difficult it can be to provide an entirely accurate transcript when a speech is being given live, even for the experienced professionals who normally provide such transcription services. While a pre-recorded documentary or drama will be relatively easy to caption ahead of time, with a live event the sub-titlers are working "on the fly" as we say, and in order to keep up with the rate at which the speech is delivered will often have to make phonetic "best guesses" as to what the words being said are. This can lead to unintentionally amusing statements appearing at the bottom of the TV screen during an otherwise staid speech.
My favourite example of this occurred a year or so ago when the then British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was making a rather dull and routine statement in a press conference about aid funds that were to be provided "both bi-laterally and multi-laterally". The caption actually read:
"we will provide these funds both by larceny and musky letchery."
Which brings me to the point - a couple of weeks ago I was in a pub which had the BBC 24 hour rolling news service showing on the TV screen (I guess the football must have finished early) The live captioning was on so although the sound was turned down, you could follow the news bulletin if you so wished. The first item was coverage of one of Obama's early press conferences when he was obviously being introduced by the commentator as "President-Elect"; except that wasn't the phrase that appeared at the bottom of the screen. No, instead, as can often happen, the sub-titler, possibly unfamiliar with this particular phrase and with no time to think, selected what he or she thought was the best phonetic combination that fitted what they had just heard. And you know, I think they could have accidentally stumbled on a much more appropriate phrase for Barack Obama (I certainly hope it proved to be the case).
What was the caption description, you say?
The President-Electric.