How to make every word count

Access to scripted and non-scripted dialogue through a mix of captioning and live speech-to-text transcription has become a regular service offered by STAGETEXT. It was recently on display at Heart n Soul's The Beautiful Octopus Club, London's longest-running multi-media club night, which took place at the Southbank Centre as part of the Unlimited Festival, part of the Cultural Olympiad.

Captioners and speech-to-text reporters (STTRs), working in teams, displayed the spoken word and song lyrics so that deaf, deafened and hard of hearing visitors could sing along, enjoy the live commentary and have a great night out.

What happens is the captioner’s laptop and the STT equipment are linked together by a switch which enables the two operators to flip between pre-prepared songs (captioning), and the presenters’ commentary which is transcribed live by the STTR using special phonetic software.

A short film showing it in action can be found on the STAGETEXT YouTube channel.  If you look closely, you can see the STTR on the left of the screen working live, and the captioner on the right scrolling the text.

To find out more about how captioning and live speech-to-text could work for you, please contact Lissy Lovett (lissy@stagetext.org) or Deepa Shastri (deepa@stagetext.org)

STAGETEXT should like to thank film-maker Catherine Donaldson and creative arts organisation Heart n Soul for its help in making this film.