CC outside the US?

May 19, 2008 2:05 PM

Is the term “caption” or “closed caption” and the “CC in a TV” symbol commonly recognizable to non-U.S. people?

Working on producing some Flash video content with English audio for which subtitles will be available in multiple languages, including European, South American, and Asian languages. Would non-English-speaking people know that the “CC” symbol in a user interface control indicates the option for subtitling?

Wikipedia says that most of the world make no distinction between “subtitles” and “captions.” Is there a standard terminology and semiology to indicate this feature as universally as possible?

posted by breaks the guidelines? to society & culture (15 comments total)

I'm Portuguese. I watch a lot of non-Portuguese tv, and I didn't know what "CC" meant until you explained it to me.

All my remotes say "SUB", and I definitely associate "captions" with magazines and written material in general, not tv.
posted by neblina_matinal at 2:11 PM on May 19, 2008

I beleive it's common in the UK, but I don't know that I would recognise it in that context - I'd go with "subtitles" if you have room for the text.
posted by Artw at 2:18 PM on May 19, 2008

The "CC" symbol is not generally known in the UK at least. On television, the digits "888" are used to indicate that a program is subtitied; 888 is the teletext page number used for subtitling.
posted by standbythree at 2:22 PM on May 19, 2008

'Subtitles' is probably more universal among English-speakers. Even in the UK we generally refer to them as 'subtitles', and I would guess that a significant percentage of people wouldn't know that a 'closed caption' is.

The spanish and portuguese words are very similar to 'subtitle', so a simple 'SUB' abbreviation ought to work for both english-speaking and hispanic audiences.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 2:22 PM on May 19, 2008

Everywhere I have been outside of the US say SUB instead of CC except maybe Canada and England. I don't remember what it said there.
posted by zephyr_words at 2:23 PM on May 19, 2008

Consumers in most regions outside North America would not know what the CC symbol is.
The most common symbols for subtitle control is a TV screen containing either greeked text in the lower third or "abc."

My suggestion is to have a simple list of languages at the head of the content, followed by a negation symbol (think the Ghostbusters logo) if the user does not want subtitles. Like this:

English
Français
Deutsch
Español Latinoamericano
Portugûes Brasiliero
日本語
普通话
廣東話
∅
posted by infinitewindow at 2:26 PM on May 19, 2008

Isn't there a distinction between "subtitles" and "closed captions" though? To me (US), subtitles indicate text in a different language from the one being spoken on screen. Closed captions are in the "native" language, and include important sound cues that would not be obvious to a hearing impaired listener, like [music playing] and [gunshot].
posted by Rock Steady at 3:16 PM on May 19, 2008

Rock Steady, no they're still subtitles. They are often referred to as subtitles for the hard of hearing in the UK.
posted by scruss at 3:24 PM on May 19, 2008

They are often referred to as subtitles for the hard of hearing in the UK.

Ah, interesting. In any case, I don't think the "CC" designation would be appropriate, even if it were understood. I've seen this symbol before, and think it would be pretty clear even to people who are not familiar with it.
posted by Rock Steady at 3:31 PM on May 19, 2008

This symbol was seen commonly during the 1980s, primarily on the ABC network in the US, but there may have been other users. I think it was registered as a trademark by the National Captioning Institute.
posted by evilcolonel at 3:50 PM on May 19, 2008

In Australia, we generally call them "subtitles", but in recent years the official term seems to have become "closed captions". That's what they're referred to as in the TV guide, and so on. And I would understand what the [CC] symbol meant.
posted by Jimbob at 3:54 PM on May 19, 2008

Rock Steady, no they're still subtitles. They are often referred to as subtitles for the hard of hearing in the UK.

Just to add to this ... American DVDs often are "SDH", or "subtitled for the Deaf and hard of hearing". The distinction is that the SDH is not part of the video signal, whereas CCs (at least in the US) are encoded in line 21 of the signal.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 4:35 PM on May 19, 2008

If I understand your question correctly, I think you could make it easier on the end-user by indicating subtitles with the standard "CC in a tv" logo, BUT you should use pop-up helper text that shows on mouseover that says "subtitles" or "closed-captioning". Ideally, you could have the player ask for their language preference onload, and then use that preference to write the word "subtitles" in their language.

An example of temporary pop-up help (and a damned-fine tutorial about creating them) can be found here.
posted by revmitcz at 4:57 PM on May 19, 2008

Closed captions are subtitles but subtitles are not closed captions. Go with subtitles.
posted by kosmonaut at 5:41 PM on May 19, 2008

I'm from India and I didn't understand what the CC symbol meant until you explained it to me.
posted by peacheater at 7:03 PM on May 19, 2008