SPELLING ISSUES OF SUBTITLES

Abstract

The Department of Applied Linguistics, Sapientia Hungarian University in Transylvania is responsible for the Translators and Interpreters BA program, functioning since 2008. Among other courses, our students study Audiovisual Translation, during which they create an own TED Talks subtitle into Hungarian. The article categorizes their errors, relying on a database of 534 examples and the students’ personal remarks. Although we focus on spelling errors (e.g. typographical errors, specific diacritical marks, numbers or misspelt words), we also deal with technical and translation errors. The conclusions section highlights the importance of enabled language specific spell-checkers (Microsoft Office Word, SubtitleEdit or memoQ), which significantly reduce the number of these errors.