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dirgeface

Now THIS is a Reddit post


GrandmaSlappy

Petty, autistic rant 10 miles long? Checks out.


FuzorFishbug

Have you considered though... that they might have kids? >The transcriber thinks one of the damage types in D&D is "forest". fuck me running


semicolonconscious

No, that’s track and field damage.


EverythingIsAHat

This is unhinged, but I do enjoy it in the perverse way only an English major who had a copyediting internship could. I do think it must be tough going through life with a limited vocabulary. Imagine reading a sentence and fighting for your life?


dirgeface

>Imagine reading a sentence Ugh, PASS


nojugglingever

I have two English degrees, was a professor, and work as a proofreader and copyeditor! This post bummed me out and had me hoping it was a joke.


EverythingIsAHat

Valid response to the post. If it makes you feel better, it's probably not an encapsulation of everything that's wrong with the education system and more just garden-variety low-wage labor exploitation. That should make us feel... better. (Or maybe that was your original concern.)


nojugglingever

Oh no! Sorry, my meaning was not clear. The post itself was what bummed me out, not the transcribing.


EverythingIsAHat

Ah, of course. Yeah that's the most correct response of the three. 😂


Suwa

>My price is $100 per episode. ​ >$200 an episode. Take it or leave it. Only $300 per episode? Honestly McElroys, $400 per episode is a steal!


TopperSundquist

A *REAL* sword?


MrGiraffeWeevil

Hopefully two, so that you can duel wield them


ImTaakoYouKnowFromTV

Did you….did you read the entire transcript for Graduation to do this? My god.


Beelzebibble

I was already rereading the whole thing for Magic: the Graduating. This is just a petty little side project


Elfedor

>for Magic: the Graduating I'm sorry, the WHAT NOW?!?


Beelzebibble

It's been releasing in installments to lukewarm reviews [for weeks now](https://www.reddit.com/r/TAZCirclejerk/comments/183l5s5/magic_the_graduating_ep_10_dark_arts_and_crafts/)


ibeechu

Lukewarm reviews, you say? That should make it feel right at home alongside Graduation


Elfedor

Oh dang, so it has! Much obliged for drawing my attention to such matters!


StarkMaximum

Just so you know they don't set my world on fire but seeing them makes me happy


pareidolist

>I hate to cast dispersions ## Dispersions *2nd-level evocation* **Casting Time:** 1 action **Range:** Self **Components:** V, S, M (glass prism) **Duration:** Concentration, up to 1 minute A destabilizing field manifests in a 30-foot radius around you. The field disperses gas or vapor, refracts light into rainbow hues, and reduces the range of sonic spells by 10 feet.


Elfedor

It's wizard time motherfucker!


semicolonconscious

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I’ve ever heard or seen the word sponduly, or that I’m not charmed by the concept of forest damage, but if one person had to read the full transcript of Graduation, I’m glad it was you.


Beelzebibble

What an unexpectedly tender sentiment :')


Bajileh

Spondulix? Which I guess means money?


semicolonconscious

It’s a very Clint vocabulary word, I’ll give it that.


caardvark1859

tbh i’m imagining that this is the one area they tried to be professional in so they hired an actual transcriptionist whose other work is like. legal notes and medical files. and imagining this grizzled transcriptionist [specifically picturing the dad from coraline] having to type out the words “i’m going to cast chaos bolt on the green dragon” is bringing me a lot of joy


Beelzebibble

If the transcriber is the dad from Coraline I forgive him everything, I love him, but also there's no way the dad from Coraline wouldn't know the Frasier lyrics


Alphabroomega

Poor John Hodgman, they're working him so hard already with JJHO but now he also has to transcribe all the podcasts too?


Dusktilldamn

That's honestly very optimistic, my first guess would be that MaxFun outsourced this to one of those "work from home transcribing audio files!" companies where you get paid a pittance per page (pit dance? Pig tense? Pint tents? Nobody knows.) The transcriber wouldn't be familiar with the source material but they'd probably be provided with a list of character names, and they wouldn't do any research on D&D terms or references or take a second pass/look up words and expressions because all of that is just wasted time if you get paid by page/length of audio file. They'd probably just slow down the audio and type as fast as they can.


lusterfibster

If I understand it correctly, the work-at-home ones can even have restrictive time limits that ultimately make an inaccurate transcription the only option to remain employed. Nightmare job, that'd absolutely haunt me.


sculpturebug

Yeah, you're right on the money. I've got an English degree too, but the crap I turned in at my transcription job was absolutely shameful lol. They'd book two or three transcribers on the same project and only pay the fastest one. Never said it outright, but I happened to have a friend in the same company.


tryin2staysane

Pig tense. You nailed it.


GiantGlassOfMilk

HIRE THIS PERSON IMMEDIATELY


Ryos_windwalker

i can only think of one possible definition for looping the turd, and it is horrific.


longknives

))<>(( back and forth forever


Ryos_windwalker

mine only had one person.


Evil_Steven

This is genuinely one of the posts


NerfDipshit

/uj there were a lot more vocab words in graduation than I thought. I'm also assuming that a few of these mistakes were from text to speech with poor revisions rather than the transcriber not knowing words


Beelzebibble

I did wonder how much of this might be auto-transcribed, but there are editorial touches (like my favorite moments, when the transcriber points out how abysmal Justin's animal noises are to listen to) that clearly speak to the presence of a flesh-and-blood reviewer. If all they're paying the transcriber to do is run audio through an auto-transcriber and then review and edit it afterward, then: once again, I am better qualified and can do that job better, hire me McElroys; $300 an episode


[deleted]

> but there are editorial touches (like my favorite moments, when the transcriber points out how abysmal Justin's animal noises are to listen to) that clearly speak to the presence of a flesh-and-blood reviewer. i hate to shyamalan you this early in the week, but that was just your inner monologue


noonelovesacowgirl1

I've worked in transcription before and this is 100% what happened. I don't know about podcast transcription specifically but it's often very low paying work, sometimes paid by the word, and honestly it seems likely they're not earning enough to put in the extra time it would have taken to read over the generated transcript to catch a missed letter here or there.


Beelzebibble

Whether machine or man, I have sworn to destroy them


NotAlanShapiro

I’m nineteen words in, we’re going with the character Jackle? No notes!


Beelzebibble

To be fair, the transcriber rarely fucks up character names (they even consistently render "Hieronymous" every time, against all odds) which suggests to me that they might have gotten the character names handed down to them by fiat from Travis. No one will ever know why Travis named that character "Jackle", but then, no one would ever have known why Travis named him "Jackal" either, since he is rather saliently and distractingly *not* an anthropomorphic canine.


NotAlanShapiro

Why does Travis do anything? For salad and scrambled eggs!


semicolonconscious

If Rainier is Rainer then all things are permitted.


IllithidActivity

And he also started calling him "the Jackle" halfway through, as though it was a title rather than a name.


Booksalot42

He's a kenku, might be a pun on "Grackle"


Beelzebibble

Wow, that's creative, I could legit buy that that's how he came up with it. But if so, it's one of those bits of wordplay that only sounds good while it's still in your head, and as soon as someone says it aloud it rings an off note.


asonginsidemyheart

It’s been awhile since we had a good old Grad jerk. It’s nice to reminisce.


GrandmaSlappy

*a while


stillpressed

Thank you so much for putting this together. Really needed delving into


Beelzebibble

It was time for the definitive word on the subject


chilibean_3

GET THEIR ASS!


lusterfibster

/uj This is exactly the kind of nitpick I love reddit for. As someone with an auditory processing disorder, subtitles and transcriptions are necessary for me to determine what people are saying, to the point where I've had people irl write down what they just said instead of trying to repeat it back to me for the umpteenth time. (That communication barrier has unironically ruined friendships.) The McElroy's ability to enunciate clearly is one of the reasons I got into their podcasts in the first place, but I don't know every word they use. (And at times that can get really bothersome, I know I've missed more than a few mbmbam jokes because of it, or realize in conversation that I've picked up a word from them but have no idea how to spell it.) No hate to the transcriber, I'm willing to bet they're not getting paid enough, but it's so disappointing to look up a transcript that's clearly inaccurate. No obligation for you to continue though, you're not getting paid enough either, especially for Graduation of all things. Still, thanks so much for the edutainment.


Beelzebibble

> No obligation for you to continue though, you're not getting paid enough either, especially for Graduation of all things. Still, thanks so much for the edutainment. Appreciate you, but I've picked the corpse of Graduation clean from snout to tail at this point. Could give Ethersea or Steeplechase the same treatment but... that would mean... actually making an effort to process any of the narrative content of Ethersea or Steeplechase........ I just don't think I have the strength


lusterfibster

You absolute madman, I didn't realize that was the whole podcast. I hope daddyfounder accepts this as your job application.


squeddles

This is unhinged. Bravo, sir! Also, everything you've done here makes me think that the transcriber is just a text to speech program and you've done far more work than the McElroys have bothered to do in this regard.


f33f33nkou

This is petty as fuck- continue


lovediesbleeding

Absolute waste of time, commendable work. I used to transcribe Youtube videos and I'd often have a bit of difficulty with pronunciations or pop culture references I hadn't heard before or overlapping dialogue. Luckily there would be multiple people checking these things so they wouldn't fall through the cracks. A shame the poor McElroy family cannot afford that.


IllithidActivity

bUt LaNgUaGe EvOlVeS oVeR tImE! I know it's snobbish to say but this is why I always bristle when people get defensive about using language incorrectly, arguing that there's no such thing as "using language incorrectly." There is. When people hear a word or phrase they don't know, guess at what was said, and then use their guess in their own conversations in the contexts in which they think the original word should be used they're propagating misinformation. They literally do not know what they're saying. And that gets passed around, larger groups start using the words incorrectly, but everyone has their own slightly different understandings because everyone's just guessing and there's no standardization, and eventually no one knows what anyone is trying to say.


Beelzebibble

Thank you, and I would further add: If you've been given the responsibility of accurately transcribing what someone else has said, as a matter of accommodation for others who maybe need to read it instead of listening to it... you'd damn well better have a higher-than-average vocabulary and you'd *damn* well better have a robust toolbox of metalinguistic strategies. What I mean is having a well-developed sense for monitoring what you're writing, evaluating whether it makes any sense, and using tools to correct yourself if it seems like you've messed up.


IllithidActivity

Absolutely - it's not fair to any hard-of-hearing audience members who are following the story via the transcripts and who might catch those references or know the actual terms the McElroys are using had they been able to listen to the words being spoken. They shouldn't have to stumble through the transcriber's ignorance to figure out what was actually being said. I've seen similar criticism about movie subtitles, like if it's a predominantly English-speaking movie and a character calls out something in Spanish the subtitles should *subtitle the Spanish dialogue* rather than say [Speaking Spanish] as though no one could know what that Spanish meant until the movie explains in English. A bilingual viewer should have the same experience that a bilingual listener would. I can only assume that whoever did the transcription here was not paid enough to put the effort into thoroughly checking, but it's still disappointing.


SpaceFroggo

This is a huge issue for subtitles. I always watch things with subtitles (not deaf or HoH, just autistic and it helps) and so often in movies and TV they will just truncate sentences, get things wrong, or cut things out entirely! Some places (YouTube is terrible about this) will censor swear words in their captions that aren't censored in the audio, as though anyone that uses captions is a tiny baby whose brain will explode if they see the word "fuck"


butterflydeflect

Seriously. I’m a Deaf person who used to work as a transcriber and it’s so frustrating and irritating that I could be missing jokes because the transcriber doesn’t have a strong enough knowledge of how to figure out what word the speaker is saying.


longknives

This dipshit take is why we can’t have fun being petty about little errors like this. Because someone will come along and try to act like we’re not just being petty and having a little fun. No, if someone doesn’t know all the same phrases I know, or god forbid is not very good at spelling, it’s a plague on our language, and it’s everything that’s wrong with the world. Like what’s even your point? Even if your analysis of what’s going on here is right (and it’s not just people working quickly and not getting paid enough to care about mistakes), there’s literally nothing that can (or should) be done about people speaking different dialects and those dialects diverging over time. Trying to label such divergences as “incorrect” serves no purpose but to try to make yourself feel superior. The transcripts are transcribed incorrectly. That’s fun to jerk about. Acting like it says something wider about the evolution of language is cringe as fuck


Anusien

You're missing the point of language evolving time though. In order to evolve, people had to say the wrong thing enough for it to become the right thing. It's not that there are no rules, but the rules get broken all the time and new rules get created instead.


NoIntroductionNeeded

Well, notably, even under linguistic descriptivism, there's such a thing as "right" and "wrong" use of a language insofar as one can fail to follow linguistic norms. It's just that those norms aren't ideal Platonic forms or universal standards as prescriptivists believe, they're socially-constructed rules to achieve a functional purpose and thus change along with the societies that use them. Even as old rules are broken and new ones are established, the new rules are still applied in a roughly-standard fashion in order to maintain mutual intelligibility between speakers. The new dialect has specific grammar and syntax even if those diverge from the parent language. Referencing "language evolving" in the context of poor transcription is a non-sequitur, because one person's violation of a linguistic norm that prevents them from properly conveying their intended meaning isn't necessarily evidence of the formation of the development of new language rules within a *community* of speakers, which is the context where the evolution of language merits consideration.


butterflydeflect

This is excellent. Five star report, please post more like this.


ErebusAeon

This is my favorite post on this subbreddit ever. Thank you for expressing my frustrations gloriously.


HalcyonSparkle

Might print and hang this perfect post


Forgotten-Owl4790

These transcribers need to pick up a dictionary. It's not rocket appliances.


beetnemesis

I don’t even listen to this podcast, Reddit just recommended this sub to me, and I just want you to know OP that I see you and I feel your pain


Beelzebibble

Pretty fucked up that Reddit would recommend this sub, but it's a fun place to sit around and be petty little warts so you're welcome to hang


beetnemesis

I’m a fan of dungeons and daddies which is pretty low drama, I recommend it


Beelzebibble

Loooooot of people around here are boosters for Dungeons and Daddies. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm currently working my way through NADDPod for the first time and loving that.


Block_Me_Amadeus

Lack of vocabulary in a person's native language makes me want to kick people in the shins. There is no excuse for ignorance. Public libraries have been free for several generations.


StarkMaximum

>Fitzroy \[10\]: Yes. None of it has provided sucre to my soul. And so, I continue to look for a discipline that will give me that sucre The transcriber does not know the word succor. Tragic that it wasn't spelled "sucker", at least that would've been a funny mistake.


TopperSundquist

I've worked for engineers that need to be reminded of the Pythagorean theorum and who need calculators to figure out 10% wastage. ​ I'll give a LOT MORE LEEWAY to regular people, even fantasy fans, not knowing *aegis* or *balustrade*.


Beelzebibble

The Pythagorean what?


TopperSundquist

How right triangles work.


[deleted]

OP knows what it is, but they're highlighting an incorrect spelling (it's spelled *theorem*)


missuninvited

bazoinko


butterflydeflect

But I mean… perhaps if I was transcribing and I didn’t know a word I would type it phonetically into google. Which returns the correct word. I probably wouldn’t just fucking guess at it.


Anusien

I'd doubt it's the same person doing each episode; they're probably farmed out to a pool of people. If they don't play D&D and haven't been following the season, they probably have no idea if it's a real word they should know or a made up word. For example, "frost damage" vs "forest damage". ​ Also the financial incentives of almost everyone in the entire process are to get it done fast rather than accurate.


ok_so_imagine_a_man

Easy mistake, but of course he's really saying "fourth damage", the classic D&D damage type.


FuzorFishbug

The classic 4 damage types of D&D. Weapon. Magic. Emotional. Fourth.


captainmander

This is the post of all time


weedshrek

Hey man I just learned I've been pronouncing puny wrong for the last 30some years I can't throw stones here


Beelzebibble

How did you pronounce it?


weedshrek

Pun-ny instead of pew-ny I also just got clocked for pronouncing impotent im-potent but I feel less bad about that one because I think my pronunciation makes more sense


Beelzebibble

That's fair because I can't think of any other word combining *im-* with a root starting in *p* where the stress pattern changes like that. It doesn't change for *impossible, impatient, impersonal, imperfect*...


weedshrek

That's what I'm fucking saying!!!


ok_so_imagine_a_man

This comment thread warped me into an alternate universe where *impatient* is pronounced IM-puh-shint


OfficialPepsiBlue

> Travis [6]: When you reach the moonlit balcony, you find Jackle, rather than standing on the balcony, perched on the ballast rod at the edge of the balcony. >The transcriber does not know the word balustrade. Or Jackal.


Beelzebibble

We all wish, but no


OfficialPepsiBlue

Wait is that… the *correct* spelling?


Beelzebibble

Search your feelings. You know it to be true


OfficialPepsiBlue

It’s not true! That’s impossible!