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Losing a loved one or a friend is a tragic and stressful period in anyone’s life. When planning a funeral, a lot of time and care is needed to ensure a proper service is held.
One resource that is useful to any service, are captions. Captions are simple speech-to-text translations that appear on a screen, monitor, or any visual medium. Captions can also be saved as transcripts, documenting the entire service from start to finish. Here, we’ll discuss how captions and transcripts can positively impact your service.
Accessibility
Millions of people around the world are Deaf, or hard-of-hearing. These communities require captions as a means of accessing any live oral events (like a funeral) or visual presentations. By taking the time to make your service accessible, you’re allowing all those who are in attendance basic inclusion into the remembrance of the deceased.
Captions are also useful if you intend to record the funeral on camera to truly remember the service. Having captions on video ensures that regardless of audio quality, or quality of hearing, anyone can understand at any time.
Accessibility covers your bases and compensates for those who typically struggle at public forums. The elderly especially can have deteriorating hearing, which affects their experience. Making sure all family members have access to the same quality memorial service can be crucial.
Live Captions
One amazing aspect of captions is that they can be created during live presentations and speeches. While family and friends give eulogies, a live-captioner can display in real-time the spoken word for Deaf attendees. This is also useful depending on the size of the venue (like a Cathedral) and the crowd; those located far from the presenter may not be able to hear or make out what is being said.
Captions compensate for another typical issue speaking events, accents. Heavy accents, or quiet speakers can have their speech translated/ corrected while performing. This means that during the live service, or in a video recording, nothing is missed or lost.
Permanent record of the service
A funeral can be a morbid, and saddening experience. However, there is joy in remembering a loved one’s life through treasured memories. Stories, photographs, and anecdotes are some of the ways in which many choose to remember the deceased in a service. With captions, and subsequent transcripts you can capture these moments in text permanently; keeping the memory of the service within the family, or to be distributed to other loved ones.
Helps with eulogies
When preparing a eulogy, not everyone can write or perform at a standard level. Some may struggle and under-perform. This is perfectly fine, especially given the circumstances. We all know that the writing of a eulogy is done under intense emotional stress.
Transcripts give us an insight into previous mistakes or issues others have made, which we can then learn from. It could give us a sense of ease when we purposefully avoid common mistakes like: inappropriate stories, rude language, poor taste humour, etc.
Transcripts give us a library of eulogy examples to draw from, meaning that accessible aids to help you are never far away.
Provides comfort and stress-relief
Loss is a difficult burden to bare. If you’re expected to write a eulogy, it can be even harder with the additional responsibility. Transcripts provide a sense of ease and comfort knowing that there are hundreds of examples to help you write your own eulogy, as well as integrate proven tropes than have worked in the past. This ensures a base-level quality that is re-assuring.
Transcripts of previous captioned funerals also has a strange, but enlightening benefit. For some it also informs us that grief is normal, and that hundreds of thousands of people have felt the pain and burden before you. Knowing that your grief is universal can be a source of comfort and ease to many.
You can check out our captioning services here.
