Professional lip reading services

The 121 Captions team deliver professional lip reading services online and onsite around the UK. Simply contact us and explain your requirements, whether they be for the courts, police, private investigators, or the media, and our lip readers will meet your deadline.

professional lip reading

Expert witness forensic lip reading award

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forensic lip reading

What is expert witness forensic lip reading

An important role is played by expert witnesses in the justice system. An essential requirement is the ability to collate information, accurately analyse data, write reports, and give evidence at legal hearings. The Lawyer Monthly Expert Witness Awards recognise the superior knowledge of experts within their field, who have proven experience of assisting the courts, tribunals, arbitration hearings and other third parties to reach a sound and just decision when considering a case.

Lip reading is not an easily acquired skill. Some are naturally good at it, some are not. Lip readers use their skill daily in everyday life every time they communicate with another person. A highly developed ability to read lips is achieved by those dependent on this skill, who are good at languages and able to constantly stretch themselves by practising lipreading various accents and faces.

The application of the skill of lip reading forensically means the lip reader is watching recorded footage and analysing it, and reporting on that footage to the court.

Our Director Tina Lannin has been selected as this year’s winner of the award for expert witness forensic lip reading due to her high expertise and knowledge in her field. This is a huge achievement and along with obtaining several highly prestigious clients, Tina is enjoying great success this year.

Further information

Forensic lip reading
Support for clients requiring professional lip reader services

Can you read my lips?

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Rachel Kolb wants to share both worlds, lipreading and sign language. The video has captions but fades them out to show how difficult it can be to lipread. It ends on a high note; when lipreading is successful it feels great to be able to communicate. A serious message is that lipreading is hard work and some people are easier to lipread than others. If you’d like to find out more about what it’s like to be a lipreader, watch the video.

Reading lips is an art, not a science. Not everyone can become a good lipreader. This is a skill which takes several years to become proficient at, with daily practice necessitating mental agility and a good knowledge of the language being lip read. It’s like drawing, with practice you will get better at it, but it’s not a skill that can be obtained within a few months with a certificate at the end of it.

121 Captions’ lipreaders have a highly developed and lifelong experience of reading other people’s lips and use this skill on a daily basis.  They depend on this skill to communicate with hearing people. Commercialising this skill means hearing people can benefit in other ways than being able to communicate with a deaf person. When a person reads lips from video footage such as a TV broadcast of a football match, and delivers a transcript, this is knows as forensic lipreading.

Forensic lipreaders lipread video footage for the media, police and the courts. In the legal field, they are known as expert witness forensic lipreaders.

Our expert team of forensic lipreaders is the most respected in the UK. We have the largest and most able team of expert lipreaders in the UK who are tested on their ability to lipread and translate unheard speech with a high level of accuracy.

We have undertaken work for several years for the international media, police forces, and surveillance agencies, lipreading football games, celebrities, political debates, surveillance footage, and more.

To find out more about our lipreaders work, contact us at bookings@121captions.com

A lip reader doesn’t just read lips

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lipreading

There’s a misconception that lipreading is just like reading a book. You look at the mouth and read, right?

But no, it’s far, far more complicated than that. I have to queue up words in my mind, invent possibilities that fit the facial expression, body language, approximate number of syllables etc etc. Sometimes there are a couple of possibilities, and I hold both in my mind simultaneously, waiting for it to become clear. While I’m doing this, collecting possibilities and sifting through them all, I need to keep the conversation going. So I smile and nod and say ‘mmm,’ and ‘yep…’ as appropriate. If I don’t do that, the speaker stops, and we haven’t gotten anywhere.

Sometimes though, I get right to the end, and I realise that none of the possibilities work. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense. And then I have to say, ‘Sorry, can you go right back to the start?’

And you might wonder, well why were you nodding and smiling and saying yes all along when I didn’t understand. But that’s because it’s how lipreading works. It’s not a lie. It’s the only practical way to do it.

It can take a whole minute or two after the speaker finishes, that it suddenly comes to me what was said.

As you can imagine, this is incredibly hard work. I have an hour of lipreading in me a day, tops. After that, fatigue sets in. And if I go too far, pushing myself for maybe 3 hours, I am WIPED afterwards, and my head pounds. It can literally take me days to recover.

This is why, even though I’m a pretty competent lipreader, I prefer other modes of conversation.

If you’d like to do your bit to help raise awareness, feel free to share this post. Thanks!

Author: Asphyxia

lip reader

Corbyn, Cameron, and the professional lip reader : Part Two

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What were David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn speaking about as they sat next to each other for the first time at an official event? Here’s what the ” lip reader ” from News Worth Sharing thought they said.

You could also have a go at being a forensic lip reader yourself…

(This unfortunate lip reader shall remain anonymous. But hey, we’re all in it together. Even if it’s awkward.)

Professional lip reader rocks it for Corbyn

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Who WERE Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron gossiping about as they waited for President Xi’s speech?

Terry and Tina worked together on this clip and they had a good laugh about it. It’s always advisable to co-work with another lipreader as it’s much quicker to bounce homophenes off each other and re-assess and re-check and adjust the transcript, rather than working alone and risk a less accurate transcription. We had a third and fourth lipreader double-check ambiguous words as well.

When co-working, you’re also more likely to pull a few more words from a clip as working for the newspapers under a tight deadline with constant emails asking “How’s it going?” “Have you got anything yet?” “Can you show us what you’ve got so far?” while you’re labouring on a work in progress – is just plain pressure!

Tina was working until 2am last night on a number of clips which included this segment. The newspapers were working until 4am so the emails kept coming. “Are you sure?” “Any news yet?”  “How long will it take you to finish it?”

*Is my brain fried yet?*

Today, it’s back to work as usual. As you can imagine, we are of course now arguing with their spin doctors about what was actually said…. even reaching Prime Ministers Questions…

All in a day’s work for a forensic lipreader! Or rather, four of them. Rock on!

*cue the music*

Published news articles:

Daily Mail : ‘It’s difficult because that’s his ex-wife who is apparently an ex-prostitute’: Who WERE Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron gossiping about as they waited for President Xi’s speech?

Independent: Jeremy Corbyn denies talking about ‘ex-prostitute’ to David Cameron ahead of speech from Chinese President Xi Jinping

Metro: Did Jeremy Corbyn talk to David Cameron about prostitutes during this awkward exchange?

The Sun: Corbyn & PM ‘chat about prostitute’ as they wait for President Xi

Lip reading Awareness Week 2015

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Lipreading and raising the profile of hearing loss

This week is Lipreading Awareness Week 2015, which is a great opportunity to highlight one of the challenges that those with hearing loss or a degree of deafness deal with every day.

Lip-reading requires a lot of concentration, and is a hard skill to master for those who have recently been diagnosed with hearing loss. It involves understanding what people are saying by observing the speaker’s lip movements, a significant communication tool for those with little or no hearing. There are over 10 million people in the UK with hearing loss, which is about 1 in 6 of the population.

Numerous organisations have been promoting Lipreading Awareness Week 2015. Age UK Hearing Aids produced this lip-reading quiz so that those who don’t rely on it can test their skills and see how challenging it can be. Of course, the quiz environment does not reflect what it’s like to lip-read all the time as you can see the same sentence repeated multiple times. In reality there is little or no time to reflect on what has just been said; lip-reading has to happen in real time. Lipreading is also more effective in a one-to-one situation, whereas larger events or situations will need to have hearing loops installed for those with hearing aids, or a captioning service such as what is offered by 121 Captions.

The Association of Teachers of Lipreading to Adults (ATLA) are also running a number of taster sessions during the week, which you can find out more about here.

Lip reading the dregs of history

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It is with great disappointment that we have seen a video from the Royal Archives of the Queen and Queen Mother published in the Sun with an attempted lipreading translation of the footage.

As expert witness forensic lipreaders, working with the courts and police in the UK and internationally, we are well qualified to comment on this video. Several of our expert lipreaders have examined this footage and our professional conclusion is that this footage is not lipreadable due to the very grainy resolution and distance from the video camera. This video is of such poor quality that it is not lipreadable – at all. Therefore it is not possible to have lipread and to come up with the comments that were published today.

Lipreading is a difficult skill to learn however it is subject to misinterpretation. When lipreading, only up to 30% of speech can actually be seen on the lips. The rest is inferred from the context of what is being said, therefore an excellent knowledge of the language is required.

Have a look in the mirror and say, without voice, “island view” and “I love you” – it is very common in lipreading to have such homophenes (words that look alike). This makes a lipreader’s job much more difficult, particularly so when you have very few words to work with.

Lipreading is not a reliable form of evidence in court and great care must be taken when using it. One of our lipreaders was involved in a quality check of the lipreading skills of Jessica Rees. Independently of two other lipreaders, they all came to the same conclusion, with no prior knowledge, that none of the key words matched the report created by Jessica Rees.

We have been following the reactions on the news and social media, it seems this is not a “wave”, however it must be pointed out that professional forensic lipreaders are not body language experts and it would be unprofessional to comment on this aspect.

The 121 Captions forensic lipreading team

Lip readers visit to Brompton Cemetery

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Walks & Talks for Lipreaders

Our Extra Walk in Brompton Cemetery, Sunday 5th October 2014

We hope you have had a very enjoyable summer with the prolonged warm and mostly dry weather. You will remember our change of plan for our July walk and the re-making of that into a 2 Part walk. Part 1 was our lovely green and tranquil walk around the City Gardens with everyone finding at least one charming garden they did not know about before.

Part 2, our extra walk, is coming up next month and is the same as that planned for the original July walk at Brompton Cemetery. So please find the booking form attached and let us know if you are joining us as we find out what happened when all those small graveyards we saw on the City Gardens walk were unable to cope with the growing population and development of London.

We are expecting our usual fine day for this very different look at London (!) and hope you will share this walk with us at the beginning of another autumn season packed with interesting cultural offerings all over London from theatre, lunchtime lectures and visual arts offerings to outings and walks and much else besides.

See you there!
all good wishes
Lynne and Sara

Lynne Dubin and Sara Scanlon
Walks & Talks for Lipreaders
48 Cunliffe Close
Oxford OX2 7BL
SMS: 07890 103 777
Brompton BOOKING FORM

Lip readers: Visit to Chartwell, Kent with lipspeakers

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chartwell house

Chartwell House. Source: iknow-uk, Creative Commons licence

Dear lipreaders & friends

NADP Rawson Bequest: Visit to Chartwell in Kent, home of Sir Winston Churchill – Saturday 27th September 2014

We hope you have all had a chance to enjoy the marvellous summer weather and perhaps been away from home to new places or firm favourite holiday destinations. We are now busy planning our autumn programme and have made a group booking for a visit to Chartwell, the home of Sir Winston Churchill in Kent.

There is a lot to see there, inside and out, but no formal guided tour around the house. The visit takes in a self guided tour of the visitor centre, with a lot of history, which uses technology in places as well as video etc. This is followed by a walk through of the house where room guides will tell you something of the room you are in. After these two visits you have beautiful gardens and grounds to walk in, a restaurant and cafe for refreshments and if you are interested there is a half hour talk in Sir Winston’s studio in the grounds which tells about his great hobby of painting. There are examples of his work on display there.

Sara Scanlon and Lynne Dubin will be on hand to lipspeak for lipreaders where required throughout the day, both in the visitor centre and house and both will be at the talk in the art studio for those who wish to attend.

For those who want to travel by public transport there are mainline trains from Charing Cross to Sevenoaks, six miles from Chartwell. Some of us will be travelling down this way and sharing a taxi from Sevenoaks station.

We have to assemble on arrival by the entrance to the Visitor Centre in time to start our visit at 11.00am. We have attached a booking form and two sheets from the Chartwell information for group visits. Please read them carefully and book places promptly as this group will be limited to 25 people. Cheques should be made out to NADP and sent to Lynne at her Oxford address. Details are on the booking form.

We advise lipreaders to have a good read of the Chartwell website to get an idea of what they offer visitors, before you book. Chartwell is in the care of the National Trust so members do not pay an entrance fee but must show their current NT membership card when required. Inability to do so will mean the group fee is then payable. Non members are charged £10.50 per person, group booking fee. This is what you pay in advance through NADP.

We look forward to seeing you at what promises to be a very interesting day.

If you have further queries after reading the website information please be in touch. We will do our best to answer them!

with all good wishes
Lynne and Sara
Lynne Dubin and Sara Scanlon
NRCPD Registered Lipspeakers
NADP Rawson Bequest programme organisers

Chartwell web address: www.chartwell@nationaltrust.org.uk

To book: Lynne Dubin lynne.dubin@virgin.net

BOOKING FORM NADP Chartwell BOOKING FORM 0914

Professional lipreader at World Cup 2014

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Watch a professional lip reader at work

A 121 Captions professional lip reader will lip read the England players and managers in the 2014 World Cup, picking up what they say by lip reading their lip shapes and relaying comments to our fans on Twitter.

Lip reading is tough work – have you ever tried to lip read Sven-Göran Eriksson? Some people are harder to lip read than others, accents come into play, so do expressions, and people are running after a ball … come and join in the fun, you can follow us and #LipReaders on your choice of social media.

All World Cup comments from the professional lip reader team will be tweeted from Twitter and sent to our Facebook page.

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The Times, page 9, 12 June 2014 : Players face maximum scrutiny as lip reader tweets their every word

ITV News, 12 June 2014: Lip reading expert to monitor England at the World Cup

Der Spiegel, 27 June 2014: Lippenleser bei der WM: Halt den Mund Lip readers at the World Cup: Shut Up (English)

This is a video of Tina Lannin’s interview on Sky News at 7.20am on 20 June. She talked about the work of 121 Captions in partnership with Twitter, and her team of professional lip readers, lip reading and tweeting the England players on the football pitch.