Hello Fellow-SRT-Users and friends!

What is SDH?

In short and very simplified:
[both moaning]
[car engine roars]
= SDH


I hope SRT is not a drug somewhere. Otherwise SRT-Users might have a strange ring to it.

Whisper-AI and our work are HUGE for deaf and hearing-impaired people. My brother's best man is deaf. Whisper-AI and other tools do not extract noises from a movie ... yet.

I think I have become quite the expert on SDH over the last year. Some stuff still surprises me though.

If you want to learn the art of SDH, AI (chatgpt) is your friend.

And official movies.

Two points of emphasis:

1. The goal of SDH is: “Convey as much as possible — without guessing.”

SDH is meant to give deaf viewers the same access to information, but:

– it can only represent what is objectively audible,
– and it must not interpret internal states of characters.

Why?
Because subtitles should not become a second layer of narration.
They shouldn’t add information that isn’t clearly present in the audio.

Whether someone is having an orgasm is:

– sometimes audible,
– often visually recognizable,
– but not always unambiguously conveyed through sound.

What is audible is described (e.g., “moaning,” “heavy breathing”).
Everything else belongs to the visual storytelling.

2. Why SDH does not write “orgasm,” even if it seems obvious

This has nothing to do with withholding information from deaf viewers.
The reason is:

– SDH must not interpret what is happening emotionally, physically, or psychologically.
– It may only describe the sound.

Otherwise this problem appears:

– The image shows A
– The audio conveys B
– The subtitle says C
→ and C becomes an interpretation, not a reflection of the audible reality.

That would be unfair, because hearing viewers do not hear that interpretation;
they only have the image and the actual audio.
Subtitles would be providing more information than exists in the sound.

Do I violate these rules?

Yes, but ppl can use tools to extract my SDH from my SRTs.

And I try to write 98% neutral or exactly what I hear. I often generate MP3 for that purpose.

BUT there was a time porn only existed in written form. Today it's everywhere, but if you were 17 in 1982 (or 1996) ... yes, the golden age of porn already had begun, but if your family did not have a VCR and you were too scared to find a "dirty movie theater" ... you had no chance.

So I know, how important the written language is.

You don't have to agree with me, but porn that means something to me, contains thoughts of the actor or actress. Is that an assumption by me? Guilty as charged.

So I try to keep the "[]" clean, but the thoughts are as "dirty" as the main action. Maybe that's wrong, but I like my artistic freedom here.

And from my almost 300 subs ... I guess 10 are "polluted" like this.