Caption disaster: 'A retirement speech is written by foot'
TV Chosun’s live caption reads “A inaugural speech is written by dreams and a retirement speech is written by foot.” / Courtesy of Twitter
By Lee Han-soo
President Park Geun-hye’s speech at the National Assembly opening ceremony on Monday was spoiled when TV Chosun misspelled a word in a caption while airing the event live.
The cable network reeled off in a caption a summary of a quote from the speech. The caption wrongly read: “A retirement speech is written by foot,” while Park originally said the speech is “written by legacy.”
The words “legacy” and “foot” in Korean have similar pronunciations, except “legacy” has an extra two characters at the end. “Foot” reads “bal” in Korean, while “legacy” reads “bal-ja-chwee.”
It is normal for TV news subtitles to be as concise as possible but the latest incident destroyed Park’s intent. A Korean phrase, “Do with one’s foot,” means to do something poorly and roughly due to lack of knowledge.
TV Chosun said it was a simple error in the process of adjusting the subtitles while airing the speech live.