Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Transcribers can be funny

My wife, older children and I are (surprise!) huge 24 fans.

So now that I've seen the first four hours, I was scanning the transcript of the cast's appearance on Larry King Live. I only scanned it, because it may contain spoilers--which I hate.

Nonetheless, I hit on this response from one of the actors:
MAROPIS: Yes, I'm full-blooded cretin.
Um, really?

A little context, and textual criticism, can do wonders:
KING: You're Greek?
MAROPIS: Yes, I'm full-blooded cretin. And my dad was in Crete and my dad
traveled by himself to return home and we were living the next day....
"Ohh," you say. "Cretan."

Yes, of course. But the busy transcriber didn't make that little contextual connection.

Very instructive.

2 comments:

Beth said...

"full-blooded cretin"

I think I know some of those...:D

Andrew Lindsey said...

He could be a cretin Cretan, just as a person could be an Arminian Armenian.