What is live captioning?
First, we need to understand what captioning is so we can evaluate its potential and fully appreciate all the benefits live captioning has to offer. According to the National Association of the Deaf captioning is “the process of converting the audio content of a television broadcast, webcast, film, video, CD-ROM, DVD, live event, or other production into text and displaying the text on a screen, monitor, or other visual display systems”. Have you ever noticed the CC option on your television, or streaming service? That is what is referred to as “closed captions”.
SyncWords live-captioning service allows you to benefit from real-time professional stenographers during a live event or meeting. It is a massive advantage over automatic closed captions since you do not have to rely on often imprecise real-time speech recognition systems. This difference in practical approach puts live captioning far ahead of its outdated counterpart.
How does it work?
SyncWords online-captioning service provides fast, professionally written live captions in real-time with minimal latency. It makes every spoken word in your event available to your audience in text format and easily integrates with various online event platforms like Zoom, ON24, Webex, Intrado, Pheedloop, and many others. Seasoned professional stenographers will provide precise real-time captions and prevent confusing subtitles from frustrating your audience or simply leaving them clueless about what the context is. Live-captioning assures you will always follow and fully comprehend whatever is being said during a live event or live transmission, no matter what speech barrier might come up between you and the streamer.
Why do I need live-captions?
There are a number of reasons why live captioning your online meetings & events is important.
Increased accessibility: live-captioning will help convey your message more efficiently and boost engagement potential with a broader audience worldwide. Moreover, this service enables you to reach wider audiences and potential clients you wouldn’t otherwise be able to engage. Part of the job of being a live captioner is the ability to recognize a lot of weird, peculiar, and unusual words. It is not uncommon for a particular word to be pronounced in multiple ways, but a live captioner would always have to spell it the same way, so anyone could understand what exactly is being said. Take the word “lieutenant” as an example. Some people pronounce it as “left-tenant,” some as “loo-tenant”, and others as “lew-tenant”, and few other ways, depending on their nationality, origins, regional dialects, etc. This is where the advantage of live captioning comes into play. Not only can our highly trained live captioners differentiate the context and swiftly deliver it to you in the shortest amount of time during a real-time event, but they will always say the word in the same manner, which means you will always have precise and contextually accurate live-captions at your disposal.
Another considerable advantage of SyncWords Live Captioning service is making events or meetings accessible for people with impaired sensory perception, such as hearing problems. But the advantage of live-captioning doesn’t end there. Those who prefer to have information delivered in their native language will significantly appreciate translated real-time captions.
Let’s also consider that even native or proficient English speaking people sometimes have trouble understanding what is being said due to various factors, such as accents, slurred speech, overlapping dialogue, etc.
Moreover, anyone familiar with automatically-generated captions knows how often they might be imprecise and sometimes borderline comedic. Best example – YouTube content or AI live captions. We’ve all had that moment when we couldn’t help but laugh at unintentional amusement provided by the automatic closed captioning. SyncWords Live Captioning steps in as the superior service that guarantees such incongruence could never occur since captions are written by trained, experienced professionals capable of delivering stenographic precision with minimal time delay.
