Okay so as someone who isn’t a first speaker of english,I do sometimes have issues understanding whats going on,for example in Yearn i couldnt tell what voices were saying,I dont mean transcripts as in a whole script but you see the subtitles timed,I think it would help a lot of people but I also understand If BF never decides to do it?
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Unfortunately, this is something that BF I think will never do due to copyright agreements and stuff. There are some fan efforts to transcribe various audios out there, but they’re frowned upon by the officials and I’ve seen some people get asked to delete stuff.
However, I do agree with you that providing some sort of text might be useful to people. I also think subtitling as you suggest would be a lot of extra work, especially if they were to retroactively do it to their whole back catalogue, so I doubt that would ever happen.
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Is there a reason BF can’t provide free PDF copies of the scripts with downloads? At least hard of hearing people would have something to reference if needed.
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Again, I think it’s to do with the BBC copyright. Legally, they’re not allowed to rather than they don’t want to, though I think they also worry it would harm sales for the scripts to be floating around (which I think is nonsense, but that’s besides the point)
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I don’t disbelieve you, but that seems very weird to me. They can commission scripts, officially get them licensed, but can’t release them? Ah well. It does suck though. Feels like an obvious thing to do, especially for listeners who are hard of hearing, or even for completely deaf people who still want to experience a BF story in some way.
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It’s so messed up that they can’t offer scripts with audios. If they did then the stories would be much more accessible to deaf and hard of hearing people, but without them there are many people unfairly excluded from BF. This is something that troubles me regularly.
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I think what it is, is that they don’t have the rights to publish written works, only the audios. That’s why they don’t publish the Benny novels anymore either, because they can’t - I think I’m right in saying that, anyway. I think it’s less willful exclusion and more a limitation of their contract
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Some Main Range stories—at least the latter 10 or so, which I’ve got—came with scripts when I preordered them. I think BF wanted to start releasing more scripts at the time, but I recall from the BF podcast they were told to stop. It’s a right shame. I don’t know if you get the scripts if you buy those stories today.
Notably, the only scripts BF DO release to this day are the Paul Spragg Short Trips, which of course are free and so (I imagine) not hindered by licensing issues.
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On the subject of excluding deaf or hard of hearing people, I have a genuine question. What to other audio entertainment and information sources do? Spotify has lyrics for a lot of the songs. But what about BBC Radio? Do they provide transcripts for the deaf community? Commercial radio?
And I’m fascinated to know how subtitles would work on audio releases. Would they play on the app? Would this be the only way a deaf person could access them?
And of course, BF did release script books back in the early days. Four volumes between 2003 and 2005. As @sircarolyn says I know their licence for printed fiction (which is essentially what these are) was revoked which is why they stopped selling the Short Trips books. But I also wonder whether these ones were particularly good sellers. At the end of the day, they’re not going to publish something which doesn’t recoup its costs. And I imagine the writers involved would need to be paid a second time/get royalties etc for their scripts to be published. And the same goes for subtitles, I would imagine, if it wasn’t in the original contracts.
Contract issues is why a lot of titles took a long time to appear on download - that option wasn’t part of the original contracts so had to be re-negotiated with all the relevant parties. The first series of Companion Chronicles took more time than a lot of the others because the director on those, Mark J Thompson allegedly played hard ball on the negotiations.
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It’d be good if the BBC allowed them to do them again, as others have mentioned for those hard of hearing, or fully deaf. Even as others have mentioned, I know for those not from the UK certain accents can be challenging to comprehend.
I do think though the frustration is often wrongly directed at BF, but then again not everyone knows its not actually them that’s stopping them being released.
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If they did release them I imagine there would be a cost implication which may mean either paying extra for the transcripts/scripts or an increase in the CD/download cost for everyone.
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imagine if we had liverpool tardis team i couldnt understand anything haha
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I personally like having the audio scripts because it’s easier to reference. If I’m looking for a certain line or scene, it’s a struggle trying to scan through a two-hour audio as opposed to just doing a “Find” in a PDF.
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Something I noticed on Big Finish’s website:
In addition, you’ll be able to access a PDF of the production script as a bonus download. Scripts are available exclusively to Monthly Adventures subscribers for release #120 onwards.
(emphasis mine)
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As someone who’s hard of hearing it’s sometimes hard to hear but I just turn the volume up which doesn’t always help but I can see why having a transcript of some kind would be useful. As Delta said though they might cost a bit more.
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My download of Technophobia came with a script…
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