Live subtitling through respeaking

Live subtitling involves the transcription of speech in real time for the benefit of people who cannot access it, for instance (although not exclusively) deaf and hard-of-hearing people. It has been a reality for over three decades, but it is with the development of automatic speech recognition and the consequent advent of respeaking as a technique to produce live subtitles that it has started to gain momentum. Conferences, academic and vocational courses, research studies, scientific publications, international projects, associations and new technological and professional advances have contributed to the rapid dissemination of live subtitling through respeaking. This paper intends to provide an overview of this technique: after a terminological introduction (Sect. 1), Sect. 2 tracks the different steps taken in this field over the years to reach the current professional standards of respeaking (Sect. 3). Finally, Sects. 4 and 5 will focus on international teaching and research on respeaking, respectively.