The potential of interlingual subtitling for language teaching has been discussed for some years now. Originally created for the provision of translation and media accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, subtitling technology is proving to be very useful to improve literacy, reading, writing and oral skills for different types of students. However, not many studies have focused on the use of subtitling to treat speech-language pathologies. This presentation will offer a comprehensive multidisciplinary approach to subtitles from the fields of Audiovisual Translation and Speech-Language Pathology.
A brief review of pedagogical subtitling will be offered, covering the above-mentioned use of subtitling to support literacy learning in the case of both children and adults with a poor literacy competence, and that of deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.
The focus will then be placed on one case of speech sound disorder: dyslalia. Given the time allowed for the presentation only one case will be presented, though its methodology can be extrapolated to other speech-language pathologies which would benefit from the use of subtitles. After summarising the main features of dyslalia, examples of the different types of subtitles used to address this disorder will be presented. These will be explained taking into account their formal parameters, purposes and technological support required. The effectiveness of subtitling in this case lies in the possibility of providing bimodal auditory and visual representation of words, which improves word recognition, decoding and vocabulary acquisition. Finally, some overall conclusions will be offered on the effectiveness of certain types of subtitles to improve language skills in users with speech-language disorders.