Subtitle revision as a tool in the acquisition of specialised terminology

The use of subtitles in various aspects of second language acquisition has been well-attested in scholarly literature (see Ávila-Cabrera, 2021, Papadopoulou & Gouleti, 2022, Talaván 2006, 2010, 2019, 2020), often with positive results regarding vocabulary acquisition (Talaván, 2007) and the improvement of written skills (Ávila-Cabrera, 2021). There can be no doubt that the use of subtitles as a creative language learning device enhances the learners’ experience. However, subtitle revision has so far been under-represented in studies dealing with subtitling in SLA. This study aims to explore the potential application of subtitle revision as a tool for the acquisition of specialised terminology. While there has been some evidence that even trained subtitle revisers occasionally introduce terminological errors in their revisions (see Van Rensburg, 2017), this finding may be due to the fact that subtitle revisers are often not specialists for specific terminological fields. Likewise, subtitle revision is usually seen as a utilitarian procedure in AVT quality assurance and may often be neglected in the wider AVT language market (Robert & Remael, 2016). Despite this, the author of this study believes it may be applied in SLA exercises as a means of acquiring and reinforcing specialised terms. For this purpose, an experimental study has been envisaged during the winter semester 2022-2023, which would use short segments of videos containing specialised vocabulary related to crisis management in her ESP course at the Department of Crisis Management. The students would subsequently revise the translated subtitles for those video segments and a mixed-methods analytical framework would be applied to the analysis of the results. Finally, the study would draw further attention to a hitherto overlooked possibility of applying subtitle revision as a valuable addition to the array of SLA learning mechanisms.