No, he wasn’t. But if you were watching Sky Sports News you may have been mistaken for thinking the wonder-kid was in an awful lot of trouble
For most viewers, it wasn’t a problem — the anchor didn’t get it wrong. But if you were watching somewhere that was making use of the automatically generated subtitles that Sky employs, you would get a confusing account of what happened.
Do the words uninjured and uninsured sound similar to you? They’re not a million miles apart. So when the Sky Sports News anchor said:
“Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo was in a high speed Ferrari crash earlier today. He was uninjured.”
The subtitles heard it as:
“Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo was in a high speed Ferrari crash earlier today. He was uninsured.”
Quite a different story, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Why was I watching with subtitles? Well… I was in the gym, working on my Cristiano Ronaldo body. But I could have been in plenty of places — doctor surgeries, waiting rooms… countless pubs — pretty much every Wetherspoons shows Sky Sports News on one screen, and BBC News 24 on the other. Both with subtitles.
And we can’t forget the deaf community either, of course.
So it’s fair to say quite a sizable amount of viewers. While it’s certain Ronaldo wouldn’t give Sky any aggro over a mistake like this — I doubt he noticed… — there may come a time when a sensitive news report could turn a bit ugly when fed through the subtitle machine.
Legally speaking, who’s responsible?
It’s not just Sky who are at fault, though. I’ve seen some terrible mistakes on the BBC’s live subtitling:
“WWI veterans lay reefs at the foot of the Cenotaph”
was one.
Usually, I’m sure deaf people can work out the real context, but you’re right in this case it would be tricky… I’m not sure what the answer is, except subtitles need to be more accurate!
Oh undoubtedly — I’ve seen a few weird ones on the Beeb too, just not ones that change the context of a story like the Ronaldo one did.
It’s not a major issue, by any means, but one that could do with addressing. How they do that I’m not sure — just a case of improving software over time.
The thing which annoyed me watching Sky’s coverage of this story was the strap “Sky sources: Ronaldo breathalysed at scene of crash” as is this was some kind of exclusive.
*everyone* is breathalysed after a crash, you don’t need a ’sky source’ to tell you that!