Pet Peeve #13,730,873,457

[neversremedy8]

When a song contains vocals, even if it's in lilting-fucking-Latin, it has lyrics. Don't fucking cop out on a lyrics site by claiming the song is "instrumental." If they just repeat "peach" over and over again, it has lyrics. If the singers say "di-da-da-di-la-di-di-di-da" it's still said to have lyrics. If you don't know the lyrics, English, Latin, or Slavic, don't fucking add a page to the artist's site claming the song is instrumental! To summarize:

Singing in Latin = lyrics (in Latin!).
Instrumental song = no fucking lyrics.
Song labeled "instrumental" when I can fucking hear lyrics = lazy dumb fucks who don't want to be bothered with being honest and saying they don't fucking know.*

Let's face it, if all music with lyrics in Latin were simply "instrumental," imagine how difficult it would be for the Gregorian chanters, or hell, any Roman Catholic singers of hymns and chants to create their devotional music.

Have I used "fuck" enough in this post? If not, I'm sure I could work more fucks and fucking into it if need be.

*This also, somehow, correlates to my pet peeve about the lazy fucks who write closed captioning for films that have more than one language in context who, when there are no translations (or even if there are) into English, choose instead of giving the phonetic spelling of the language in question simply put in Speaking X Language (where "X" is Transylvanian, Hutese, or something else entirely). Did it ever occur to them that maybe people who enjoy the movie AND language might want to know how to say that particular phrase themselves (assuming it's a true translation)? For example: at one point in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Gary Oldman says something to his three females in Dracula's native tongue. It sounded pretty damned authentic, and I wanted to know exactly how to articulate it, since he was mangling his voice and the sound effects disrupted easy ability to pick up the phrase. What did the closed captioning have to tell me? "Speaks foreign language." They couldn't even be bothered to tell me what language! And I know for a fact that the CC on some movies does give a Romanization of the language in question. I want that every fucking time I watch a movie. I want to know EXACTLY how to pronounce it, because my eyes pick up easier what my ears try to comprehend, if I have both together, SNAP! It's in my brain for good. Thus ends my ranting for the moment.

Comments

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

I don't know, Cocteau Twins used voice as an instrument, and they considered their 'songs' to be instrumental pieces with the human voice as an instrument.

[neversremedy.livejournal.com]

Given their perspective, ALL music using a voice is simply "instrumental." The Cocteau Twins, however, do not define music as a whole. They can define their songs whatever they want, but when any other band has lyrics that are in a language I used to be fluent in, I don't appreciate these pop-up infested lyrics sites to tell me the songs are instrumental. At least www.alwaysontherun.net has the decency simply to not provide lyrics because the owner doesn't know yet. If she thought they were instrumental, she would have said so in small print beneath each song title.

[shoewhore76.livejournal.com]

Ohmygosh.. I'm dying of laughter. I loved this post, R. You ROCK!!!!!!!

[neversremedy.livejournal.com]

Thanks. *blush*

It's just my favorite word is all. ;)

[inanna.livejournal.com]

Pet peeve... switching to tiny type so that i can't fucking read it unless i change my screen up to 200% size. :) Have you heard of italics? :)

[inanna.livejournal.com]

*hug* but i LOVE you. ;)

[neversremedy.livejournal.com]

And *I* love *you*!

Footnotes are meant to be small, darling.

[neversremedy.livejournal.com]

*snickers* What's your screen doing so small for? Huh? Huh? Too high a resolution and 10pt looks like tiny dots in Flatland. Silly.

Is that fucking better? ;)

Re: Footnotes are meant to be small, darling.

[inanna.livejournal.com]

Much better. But, i beg to differ that footnotes are always smaller. They are simply at the foot of the document.

Re: Footnotes are meant to be small, darling.

[neversremedy.livejournal.com]

Yes, they are, though I am accustomed to them also being somewhat smaller as well. La. Different screens. I'll bet yours doesn't even have the right colours for my icons! Wicked, wicked thing. ;)

Captioning lyrics

[(Anonymous)]

Well, this will vary according to captioner and conditions. WGBH goes to often-Herculean efforts to identify correct language; the Boston office can transcribe several languages. Captions, Inc. is hit-or-miss on IDing a language. NCI is hopeless.

Now, if the captioner does not have a script (preferably a spotting list), it can be legitimately difficult for the 24-year-old wymmynz with liberal-arts degrees who do captioning (it's just a job to them) to accurately ID the language, let alone transcribe it. I agree that it is sometimes stupid (any twit can tell that's Italian!), but sometimes it isn't.

Additionally, sometimes they actually don't have final audio on the tape. This really happens.

Notice that there are no categorical statements that can be made on this topic. A whole flowchart of things can go wrong. – Joe Clark (http://joeclark.org/access/)

Re: Captioning lyrics

[neversremedy.livejournal.com]

Ah, such imprecise methods are these for communication! Thank you for the enlightenment on the subject, Joe Clark.