Breaking Barriers: Forensic Lipreading and the Bruce Lehrmann Case
“I had just become the first forensic lip reader to have an expert witness report accepted as reliable evidence in a major trial, making Australian legal history…”
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Everything you need to know about professional lip reading
Lip reading is one of these things that everyone knows what it is, but they don’t actually know very much about it.
There are some surprising facts about lip reading as well as some common misconceptions, so we’ve put together this short article to tell you everything you need to know. Read more →
Expert witness forensic lip reading award
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?
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
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
Corbyn, Cameron, and the professional lip reader : Part Two
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
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
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
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