Police and protesters clash in late-night drama, prepping for a move to phase 3 and stand-off continues between Ukraine and Russia in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
Waikato Regional Council pulled its first online streaming of a full council meeting half-way through after the captions were lost in translation and referred to "RAT tests" as "rape kits".
Earlier in the meeting the subtitles incorrectly transcribed the word "is" as "ass" and referred to "councillor Pamela Storey" as"councillor Secret".
The mostly humorous , but sometimes offensive misinterpretations and bloopers carried on for more than an hour before the livestream was suddenly pulled from its YouTube channel at about 12.30pm.
It was back online within an hour with the subtitles removed.
Councillors had just received a health and safety report which included a demonstration about how it would be using rapid antigen tests (RATs) when the video was abruptly replaced with a serene image of a family sitting on a park bench with their small dog.
The staff member has just made comments that people could "check in with a RAT test", but this was translated in a subtitle as "chicken rape". The words RAT test were also misconstrued as "rape kit".
Waikato Regional Council chief executive Chris McLay said the council had been investigating livestreaming meetings to make decision making even more transparent for it communities.
Waikato Regional Council's livestream was back online within an hour without subtitles. Image / Waikato Regional Council
Today's livestream has been a trial and the link hadn't been promoted so it could troubleshoot any issues including using the captioning option.
"Unfortunately, it appears the Kiwi accent is a tough one to decipher and some words were being wrongly captioned ... When we became aware of the live captioning issue, we deleted the recording."
The council still plans to formally begin livestreaming from March, but it will now be without captions.
Today's soft launch comes more than two years after the council voted in December 2019 to live stream meetings.
The delays were due to disruptions caused by the pandemic and because the council was waiting move to its new building in the CBD, which happened at the end of May 2022, according to a council response provided to the Herald last month.
The council had planned to livestream the meeting via YouTube using a single camera on a tripod on August 21 last year, but the plans were scuppered after the country went back into lockdown a week before it was due to happen.
It instead started publishing online audio-visual recordings as soon as possible after meetings as an interim option.
