Captioning Corner: A Few Good Questions

By Deanna Baker

Is it better to be an independent remote "freelance" captioner or full-time employee for a captioning company?
Consider what is it you're looking for. There are huge differences between being an employee and freelancing in the captioning industry. There's also the question of equipment needed (the NCRA Web site has many articles written on the subject).

I have a tran rate between .2 and .5. Is this good enough to get into captioning?
That's a good translation rate you have, but captioning is a little different from just correct realtime translation. Captioners look at their total error rate, which includes incorrect punctuation, meaningless sentences and word boundary problems. Total Error Rate, or TER, includes many things other than untranslates. But ultimately, you want to aim for 99% + for a TER.

How much preparation should I expect to spend for a show?
When I first started out, I usually figured on a half an hour of prep for each hour of broadcast captioning -- that time does get smaller as you become more experienced and cover more stations. Prep time involves Internet research, dictionary maintenance, and connecting early for tests.

About the Author

Deanna Baker, RMR, is from Flagstaff, Ariz. If you have a question about captioning, you can ask her at dpbaker@mindspring.com.