Captioning Rabbits by Emily Owen

 

(Image: Christopher Paul High, www.unsplash.com)

A priest, a minister, and a rabbit walk into a blood bank. 

The rabbit says, ‘I think I might be type o’

During the past year, I have had cause to think about rabbits – or typos – quite regularly.

As more and more things have moved online, I am so grateful for auto captions. They mean that I, as a deaf person, can follow what the speaker is saying, as speech is automatically converted to text.

Most of the time, the captions are impressively accurate. Sometimes, they get it slightly wrong. Nearly always, when they do, I find them thought-provoking (TP). I’ll give some examples. Each could be a blog in itself:

Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing’ came up as 'The Lord is my Shepherd, I like nothing’

TP: Do I like nothing?

‘Thanks be to God’ came up as ‘Thanks Pizza God’

TP: How can pizza be used as an illustration? Let me count the ways…..

‘Pastoral issues’ came up as ‘Postural issues’

TP: Are pastoral issues sometimes made more difficult because we don’t think about posture (kneeling in prayer) first?

‘Hope is alive’ came up as ‘Hope is a lie Eve’

TP: Do I live as though my Hope is not true?

‘Character of God’ came up as ‘Carrot of God’

TP: God guides us with a carrot, not a stick.

Last week, I was in a meeting, and was very impressed by the auto captions picking up what was being said by different people. The meeting was to do with education and so when the captions started ‘talking’ about a dog, I assumed they’d got it wrong. I was trying to work out what ‘dog’ should have read, and was about to ask in the chat, when I realised that dog was correct: someone had mentioned that the noise in the background, which presumably others heard, was their dog. 

By now, you might be wondering why on earth I am rabbiting on about typos on a writer’s blog. After all aren’t typos often the bane of our existence?!

A few weeks ago, I held an online book launch, and I decided to have live captions rather than auto, meaning someone would listen in and type what was said. I made this decision because, good though auto captions are, live ones are better. They make fewer errors. And I needed to properly understand all that was said.

As writers in ACW, we ask God to lead our writing. And sometimes, I find, the writing flows, God inspiring me in an almost subconscious way. I’m almost auto captioning what He puts on my heart.

But sometimes, I need to stop, and consciously attune my heart with His as I seek to capture it on the page. Taking dictation from Him. Checking He’s with me, or I’m with him, or both.

I need to be sure I don’t become a bit like Mary and Joseph in Luke 2: travelling home from the temple, such a routine thing for them to do, assuming Jesus was with them, and eventually realising that He wasn’t - because he’d gone in a different direction.

I don’t always get it right, there are times when neither way of writing-capturing works, and I stare hard at a blank screen (perhaps the equivalent of a power cut rendering any kind of captions void). But something I’ve learned about captions: the live ones might take a little longer to come than the auto ones, but they are worth waiting for. Because someone has taken the time to listen so that they can be sure of what they are being asked to relay…..

Psalm 25:4 Show me the right path, O LORD; point out the road for me to follow.

Psalm 23:1 The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing….