This is a somewhat strange request for assistance. I work as a freelance translator/Subtitler for Showtime Arabia and am currently working on some episodes of NYPD. I keep coming across some jargon and terminology which I cannot understand, even though I lived in the States for 13 years. If any one out there knows this jargon, please help!

For example:

Some one asks about an officer and the reply is:

* She is on lost time
* Does she need lost time?
* No, she probably needs to catch the case.

Does lost time here refer to "time off due"? That's the only thing that came to my mind.

Ofcourse there are a lot of other things. This is just an example to see if someone knows anything about this kind of New York police jargon. Or is it made-up jargon?!

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out here.

Hisham,

I'm a BIG NYPD Blue addict. (Andy Sippowich for ever!)
I don't think it's made-up jargon. However, mostly I watch the serie with Dutch sub-titles... So, I'm not a big help with the New York 'slang', I'm afraid.

In what context took that conversation place?
Mostly it's depending on the situation.
By what I know now I would think she's working a case in her own time / over time, but when the context is clearer.
'Lost time' mostly means something like absence during work hours or a short leave.

'To catch the case' refers to finnishing or urgent working on the case.

Any NY-ers on the Big A who can help???


Paul

In that context, to catch a cash means, she would want to grab or take the next job/case available. They use the "lost time" phrase all the time on that show but I never have heard it anywhere else. Anytime they want to slip away during work hours for personal reasons they call it lost time. Maybe it means certain blocks of time at work when you really can't say what you were doing, ie "lost time", but you were still available for work so it doesn't count as vacation or time off etc.
All the crazy "cop speak" was one of the fun parts of the show, I assume it was all authentic as they had NYPD cops helping with the show and stories.

Hi Paul, thanks for responding. I agree with you regarding understanding the meaning from the context. But sometimes, like in this case, I can't figure out much from the scene or from what's supposed to be going on. I hope some NYers read this and can help out.
Among some of the weird things which I found the meaning of in the official NYPD site was...
"He is back in the bag"... means "He is back in uniform". I mean, how on earth are regular viewers supposed to understand that. As much as I like the show, I think this "slang-jargon" bit is overdone to the point where even some Americans I have asked don't inderstand the dialogue. Oh well.. every job has it's down side, I guess.

Hisham, I heard an interview with David Milch, the producer (who also wrote Deadwood for HBO) a year or so back in which he said he made up a lot of the language to get past ABC's censors.
Here's a link to that Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Thanks for that link, Al. I kind of had a feeling that some of that slang is infact made up.

Hey Hisham,

I came across this site:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/

It helps to "talk the talk" :-)

By the way: are you using subtitles or syngronising?

Bye Paul

I know this comes late, but thanks for the link. It's quite useful.

What I do is translate the dialogue into consice sentences and then use a special software to synchronize these sentences with the corresponding dialogue. We call that Time-coding.

Thanks again.