There is no doubt that Subtitling for the D/deaf and HoH (SDH) offers an invaluable service to millions of D/deaf and HoH viewers providing them with access to audiovisual media broadcast on television and increasingly in cinemas, DVDs and on the Internet. However, very little research has been dedicated to describing current subtitle output; for instance, although verbatim vs. edited subtitling is a much discussed issue in SDH, we still do not know to what extent current subtitles are verbatim and to what extent they are edited. In this light, large-scale corpus-based research is deemed essential, as not only will it allow us to better map the world of SDH, but it will also constitute the first step towards determining the needs and preferences of D/deaf and HoH viewers and ultimately in providing consistently high-quality subtitling.
In addressing the issue of this paper, I will:
• Point out the need to adapt current corpus typology in order to accommodate typical intralingual SDH corpora, i.e. corpora consisting of texts in one language and their subtitles in the same language
• Suggest features to measure and metrics to use in order to describe current subtitles
• Underscore the need for standardisation: this includes among other things determining how to measure subtitle rate and the need to identify a suitable metric, determining how to measure deletion and defining/agreeing on instances of poor segmentation within subtitles
• Report some initial findings on the basis of my research and suggest relevant hypotheses.

Dimitra KALANTZI has a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Athens, Greece, and an MSc in Machine Translation from UMIST, UK. She has recently completed her PhD at the University of Manchester . Her research focused on Subtitling for the D/deaf and HoH (SDH) and presented a corpus-based methodology for the analysis of subtitles with an emphasis on deletion and segmentation; it also suggested the use of language technology for designing a new tool that would alert subtitlers working off-line by flagging potential segmentation problems in subtitles. She has been working as a translator since 2005 and has presented papers and posters at various conferences.