Cultural and Specialized Skills of a Subtitler

The article offers a practical approach to the skills a present-day translator needs in order to create high-quality translations. Although a lot of theories can be found regarding the skills of a translator, it is worth checking the reality, which is the primary aim of this article. After a short introduction about the standard skills, we look into the subtitling of an episode from a TV series. Our presupposition is that a subtitler has to combine all sorts of information from different fields effectively in order to maintain quality, including general and specific knowledge of the subject matter. Furthermore, the particular environment of subtitling may contain certain pitfalls, such as the technical know-how. layout, and constraints deriving from the nature of subtitling. We can draw the conclusion that a well-prepared translator can successfully handle the technical challenges of multimedia translation of whatsoever type.