Method and apparatus for providing dual language captioning of a television program

摘要

A method of decoding data for a language having the Roman alphabet or a language having a syllabic alphabet from a television data stream includes the steps of receiving the data in the form of data packets and determining from bit values stored at particular bit positions whether the data is control data or represents printable character data comprising a head code or a tail code. Once it is determined that the data represents either a head code or a tail code of a printable character, the data bytes are valued for parity and, from that determination, a letter component is generated which points to a letter component or complete character for one or the other alphabet. Because characters of a syllabic language may be quite complex, the step of displaying the syllabic language character includes the steps of overlaying two or more letter components to form the syllabic character image.