Why these words go wrong
If you scan a long subtitle file for mistakes, the errors that stand out most often involve names and specialist words. There are a few reasons.
Ordinary words are predictable. A listener, or a speech recognition system, can use the surrounding sentence to work out what is being said. A surname, a place name or a technical term has much less context to lean on, so a wrong guess is more likely. Names also have many legitimate spellings: “Catherine” and “Katherine” are both correct, and only the person or source can say which one applies.
Specialist words add another problem. A word that is rare in everyday speech can sound like a more common word, so the wrong one gets written. Automatic transcription, in particular, tends to replace unfamiliar terms with familiar-sounding ones, and the result may be a fluent sentence that says something different.
Finally, a repeated mistake is multiplied. If a presenter’s name is wrong once, it is probably wrong everywhere it appears.
What counts as a name or term
It helps to think in groups, because each group needs a slightly different check:
- People: speakers, people mentioned, titles and forms of address.
- Organizations: companies, institutions, teams, charities and agencies.
- Places: cities, regions, venues and landmarks, including places with local spellings.
- Products and projects: feature names, internal project names, event names.
- Acronyms and abbreviations: especially those that are pronounced as letters in speech but written differently in a document.
- Specialist vocabulary: medical terminology, legal terms, scientific or engineering words, sector jargon.
- Foreign words and borrowed phrases: terms the speaker leaves in another language.
Where the correct form comes from
The reviewer’s first job is to find a reliable source rather than guess. Useful sources include the script, slides, show notes, an organization’s own materials, a speaker list, a client contact or the speaker themselves. A project glossary captures the answers once found so nobody needs to look them up again.
If no source exists, there are a few cautious steps. Listen again to the audio, which sometimes reveals that the speaker spells or stresses a name in a particular way. Ask the person who commissioned the video. If it remains uncertain, flag the term for follow-up in the review notes rather than choosing a spelling that merely looks plausible. A confident but wrong spelling is harder to catch later than a clearly marked query.
Practical ways to check
Read the names first. On a first pass, look only at capitalized words and unusual spellings. Compare each against the source material. This is quicker than reading for everything at once.
Search for variants. Use a find tool to look for each key term, and for likely misspellings. If a company is “Northfield,” search for “North field,” “Norfield” and similar forms. Searching also confirms capitalization is consistent.
Check with the audio. For critical names, play the moment where the name is spoken and compare it to what is written. This matters more when the speaker’s accent or the recording makes the sound ambiguous, as explained in the discussion of accent recognition and audio quality.
Use confidence information carefully. Some automatic transcription tools mark words they are less sure about. Looking at confidence scores can point you to words worth checking first, though a high score does not guarantee a word is right, and a low score does not mean it is wrong.
Feed corrections back. If the tool allows a custom vocabulary, adding the names and terms from the project can reduce repeat errors next time. Results vary, so the output still needs checking.
Check numbers attached to names. Dates, model numbers, ranks and measurements next to a name are easy to garble. Confirm them too.
Specialist content needs a specialist
A general proofreader can confirm that a term is spelled consistently and matches the source. They cannot always judge whether it is the right term. For medical, legal, technical or safety material, an accurate subtitle may depend on a subject expert or a qualified reviewer confirming the vocabulary. A wrong drug name, dosage unit or legal term can mislead, and subtitles of that kind should not be treated as finished until someone qualified has checked them. This is one of the main reasons human review still matters in sensitive areas.
Translated subtitles
In translation, names and terms raise additional questions. Should a person’s name be written as in the original or adapted to the target script? Should an organization keep its original name, use an official translated name, or add a short explanation the first time? The answers depend on the audience and house style, and should be recorded so every translator makes the same choice. Names in languages written in other scripts may also have more than one accepted romanization, so decide on one and stick to it. Cultural considerations sometimes affect choices too, for example how formally a title is rendered.
Making the check routine
Teams that handle names well tend to treat the check as a defined step, not an afterthought. A simple version is:
- Collect names and terms from the source material before work begins.
- Agree on the written form of each and record it.
- Do a dedicated names-and-terms pass at proofreading time.
- Resolve open queries before release.
- Add anything new to the shared list.
None of this removes the chance of error, but it moves the most likely mistakes from the end of the process to the start, which is where they are cheapest to fix.