meaning - Is "Most of the world does not distinguish captions from subtitles" true?


In the wikipedia article about closed captioning one reads



Most of the world does not distinguish captions from subtitles. In the United States and Canada, these terms do have different meanings, however: "subtitles" assume the viewer can hear but cannot understand the language or accent, or the speech is not entirely clear, so they only transcribe dialogue and some on-screen text. "Captions" aim to describe to the deaf and hard of hearing all significant audio content [including] music or sound effects ...
The United Kingdom, Ireland, and most other countries do not distinguish between subtitles and closed captions, and use "subtitles" as the general term—the equivalent of "captioning" is usually referred to as "Subtitles for the hard of hearing".



Questions: Are these assertions about the respective meanings in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, and "most other countries" correct? If so, on what authority? If not, what meanings are correct?



Answer



From Apple's Final Cut Studio documentation:



In the U.S., closed captioning for broadcast is mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). If you’re delivering tape masters for broadcast, closed captioning may be an important consideration. Subtitles are usually provided as a convenience, although translation to a country’s native language may be required for film festival or theatrical exhibition and will certainly enhance your ability to find theatrical or DVD distribution there.



Closed captioning is mandated for Canadian broadcasters as well, by the Canadian Broadcasting Act. Standards for assistive technologies like closed captioning are fragmented the European market, although they're being considered in draft standards for Internet television delivery in Europe.


Final Cut's documentation continues:



Closed captioning is a subtitling system designed to make television more accessible to the hearing-impaired. Unlike movie subtitles, which are intended to translate dialogue for people who can hear the rest of the soundtrack, closed captions need to convey all important sound effects, music cues, nonverbal expressions, and dialogue that occur as a program plays.


...


Subtitling is usually done for the purpose of translating either particular scenes or an entire program. It may be done because the dialogue is in another language or because the dialogue is simply unintelligible to the intended audience.


The easiest way to add permanent subtitles (sometimes called open captioning) to your program is also the most time-consuming: editing superimposed text generators into your sequence one at a time.



Closed captioning is mandated specifically "to meet the needs of Deaf, deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing people" [Captioning in Canada], and so the specific distinction of closed captioning from subtitling is made in the US and Canada (and apparently Australia).


Since most of the rest of the world has no such mandate, they make no such distinction.


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