Enlarged Prostitute, Indeed

From both the "hee-hee" and "ew!" lobes of the brain, Gothamist brings you Lloyd Grove's piece about the mis-captioning on ABC News:

Andrea Mitchell and Alan Greenspan; Photo - Getty Images We initially refused to believe an alert ABC News fan who told us that the closed captions for the 6:30 p.m. Tuesday feed of Peter Jennings's "World News Tonight" informed viewers that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was "in the hospital for an enlarged prostitute."

But yesterday a network spokeswoman confirmed the wording -- provided by ABC's Pennsylvania-based closed-captioning contractor. Apparently the typist hit the wrong key, or keys. The glitch was fixed for the 7 p.m. feed.

"We strive for perfection," ABC's Cathie Levine told us, "but when you're typing that fast, there are occasional mistakes. We regret the error."

Greenspan was home recovering yesterday from prostate surgery, said his wife, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. As for that "enlarged prostitute," Mitchell told us: "He should be so lucky."

Gothamist loves closed captioning, because it allows us to talk on the phone, watch/read TV, and listen to music at the same time. This is in the rare event we're not blogging.

[Via Romenesko]

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in Arts & Entertainment on April 24, 2003 2:59 PM

Comments [rss]

Wolf Blitzer

As an objective journalist, I can't tell you how many times this comes up. Those transcribers think they are journalists and often misquote us. We don't like the transcribers...they don't give us a chance to add our input. This would be especially helpful when it's a live broadcast re-run. We could make better statements, that sort of thing. But no...they won't stand for it. I'd like to beat the crap out of some of them.

bryan

if i could be so lucky as to get chinese vcds with mis-translations like these. I would be laughing until i peed in my pants.

Lena

This reminds me of some of the Chinese sub-titles of American movies on VCD/DVD you get in China. Due to the sometimes limited ability of the translators, they'll just make up their own storyline that's different from the original movie plot. So if you do not understand English and depend on sub-titles...