Together 2025 Speaker Article: Part 1 with Mirta Boschetti
As we continue to take in the insights shared at ELIA Together 2025, we’re thrilled to bring you a new series of articles from our speakers, providing you with hands-on perspectives, learnings and takeaways from their talks and presentations. In this first edition, Mirta Boschetti shares her insights from her subtitling-focussed session:
Ensuring Quality in Subtitling: Best Practices for Review and Language Quality Assurance (LQA) in Film Translation
How often have you watched a film with subtitles on, only to be distracted by an inconsistency, a mistranslation, or poorly synchronised dialogue? Probably more times than you would like. If, like me, you enjoy unwinding with your favourite series, you certainly appreciate well-crafted subtitles.
This was precisely what motivated me, on February 21st, to share my insights as a subtitling reviewer at ELIA Together 2025.
The first part of the session focused on quality in subtitling, beginning with the key findings from a survey I conducted last November. One of the key takeaways was the variation in quality across different media. For example, subtitles in cinemas and on television were rated higher than those on streaming platforms. Unsurprisingly, the lowest quality was observed on social media (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok), where automatically generated subtitles are often published without any kind of human review.
Even within streaming services, quality levels fluctuate depending on the platform, the type of content, and the languages involved. The most frequently reported issues included mistranslations and linguistic inaccuracies, followed by technical and formatting problems. Ascertained that these issues often have an impact on the viewer experience – they can be distracting, annoying, or make it difficult to follow the plot – we also explored what are the main challenges from the subtitlers’, reviewers’, and PMs’ point of view.
The second part of the session delved into my own review and LQA processes at the Lucca Film Festival. As a subtitling coordinator, my role is to ensure that the Italian subtitles created for the festival meet the high-quality standards.
Exploring some of the most useful features of Subtitle Edit, I demonstrated how to identify and rectify common issues, from spelling mistakes to synchronisation and technical issues, such as exceeding characters per second (CPS) and characters per line (CPL) limits.
Finally, through real-world examples, we observed the kind of work I perform on subtitles for the festival: from refining the register to respect the director’s artistic vision and style to correcting literal translations, the most important aspect to consider is that subtitles should always be clear, accurate, and credible.
To conclude, in a world where the global film subtitling market is worth over $8 billion and is expected to grow even further, a lot can be done to ensure and improve subtitling quality. By providing translators and reviewers with the right conditions – including adequate time, clear guidelines, and access to supporting materials – and prioritising thorough review and LQA processes, we can ensure that subtitles serve their fundamental purpose: making content accessible, enjoyable, and true to its original intent.
What are your thoughts on quality assurance in subtitling? Don’t hesitate to reach out to Mirta via her LinkedIn or website to continue the conversation!
Share your thoughts on this topic here on LinkedIn, and follow this series where we will share more speaker articles from Together 2025.
