Very occasionally in audio description, onscreen text appears that has to be read out loud. That part isn’t actually very occasional. The very-occasional part is when the text contains profanity.

It comes up now and then. A bumper sticker read SHIT HAPPENS in Forrest Gump. Black Hawk Down had my fave example: “McKnight mouths the word ‘motherfucker.’ ”

In Wanted, nutbar diretor Timur Bekmambetov (or Темір Бекмамбет – two Kazakh dudes on the subway taught me the correct pronunciation one time) defies every law of physics. The movie is credited to a trio of screenwriters. Usually too many cooks spoil the broth, but this broth has just the right brio.

It’s been a long time since I saw characters not even pretending they were trying not to swear. Profanity came up over and over again, even at a fake ATM. Look and listen, as for research, personal study, or review. (Check the Flickr video set.)

• 

  

  NARRATOR: The machine notes “Your transaction cannot be processed.” More messages appear: “Insufficient funds. You’re an asshole.” Then screen prompts ask: Correct or incorrect? Now the ATM reads “You’re broke, your best friend is fucking your girlfriend, you know it, and you’re too big a pussy to do anything about it.” Wesley selects Correct and leaves. Later, in the pharmacy.

• 

  NARRATOR: They hide behind another shelf ad. Now, as the woman uses her cornerscope, Wesley makes a run for it. The woman mouths the word “fuck” and goes after him. Wesley sees Cross, who walks toward him, gun lowered.

• 

  NARRATOR: Everyone steps out of his way except Barry, who nods and walks straight for him.

  BARRY: Yeah. That was great, bro. Who’s the man?

  NARRATOR: Wesley slams the keyboard across his face, sending several keys and a tooth flying. The airborne keys spell FUCK YOU.

Miles Neff was, as usual, the voice (a mainstay of the Descriptive Video Service), but there wasn’t a writing credit on the descriptions. That must have been a fun day at the office.

A couple of months ago while doing the dishes, something occurred to me as if spontaneously: “I need a whole new set of friends.” It seems now like a capital idea.

If you’re wondering whether or not you’ll be on my shitlist, the numbers aren’t in your favour. Expect to be unfollowed in Q1 ’09. You deserve nothing less, while I deserve a great deal more.

The Ontario government has just handed $172,500 to an amorphous nonprofit known as Magazines Canada (né CMPA). What are they going to do with the money?

Magazines Canada Digital Discovery

This project supports the creation and hosting of digital editions of Ontario and other Canadian magazines. Magazines Canada will research and, through an RFP process, select an independent and seasoned provider of digital services to develop a conversion, delivery, and maintenance solution. A marketing plan will help magazines utilize the materials created to access new markets, improve customer satisfaction and keep pace with trends in new media and mobile technology.

Given the massive, endemic incompetence in online development in Canada (Cf. Canadian New Mediocrity Awards), here’s what the “seasoned provider of digital services” selected by “an RFP process” is likely to do:

• They’ll develop an entirely new E-book format just for Ontario magazines. It’ll have DRM, of course. Or use an existing DRM-laden E-book format. Or use some other format that requires custom software, which the “seasoned provider” will write itself. (It won’t work on Macs.)
• Or they’ll perpetuate the nonsensical notion that people want digital versions of magazines to look exactly like the print version (Cf. New Yorker Digital Reader, Times Electronic Edition, various newspaper analogues) and issue every magazine as a 60MB PDF. Untagged, of course.

Remember: As in other fields, when print publications move to online distribution, they make the same mistakes over and over again. A “provider of digital services” becomes “seasoned” in Canada by recapitulating the same mistakes, not by learning from them and trying something else. In this case, the mistakes are much worse than those to which we’ve become inured in the Web domain – tables for layout, “font tags,” Flash.

The only reason to run up a six-figure consulting bill is to reinvent the wheel. To justify that kind of budget, you have to write a custom software platform and/or reader application. While this is exactly the wrong thing to do, Magazines Canada and the Ontario government don’t understand that. But it is the only outcome that justifies the grant money.

Here’s what this “seasoned provider” assuredly will not do:

• Convert Ontario magazines to standards-compliant Web sites with nearly-valid code, one article per page (not pageview-inflating multiple pages per article), print CSS, RSS, microformats, and moderated comments. (This task has so little cost it could not possibly have ever justified applying for a grant.)
• Test the platform to prove it functions for disabled people.

Your tax dollars at work.

On the other hand, they also gave the ATRC money for accessibility, so I guess one-sixteenth of the project isn’t all bad.

Jakob Nielsen, a Danish national, operates under the misapprehension that there are exactly two ways to spell in English – British and American.

If your site is based in a single, English-speaking country and you don’t mind being viewed as a local site from that country, use its language variant. So a U.S. site should use American English, whereas a U.K. site should use British English. Similarly, sites based in Australia or other Commonwealth countries that predominantly use British English should use that variant.

Canada has its own set of spellings and that set doesn’t match any of the U.S., U.K., or “Commonwealth” spellings.

Canadian sites that mainly target the U.S. should use American English, unless they want to emphasize the fact that they’re foreign. (This can be a selling point, but most American users view it negatively.)

He has no research basis backing that up, of course.

Nielsen’s posting does what his postings usually do – gives no firm advice and leads into an ad for a seminar his company is running. It also mixes up the issues of spelling and word choice. Fundamentally, the posting reiterates the lie that there is such a thing as an international English. There isn’t – not in speech and not in writing. (Don’t believe me? Phone an Indian call centre.)

After ten years of continuous error correction, why do Nielsen and his clients insist on believing he never makes mistakes? Why is it impossible to report mistakes? Some of us actually pay people to error-check our work.