In this article, subtitling without context refers to situations in which subtitlers do not have access to the image and sound of an audiovisual text, which they need to carry out their translation processes efficiently and successfully. Audiovisual texts, such as movies, need to be seen and heard to be understood and their meaning translated. What happens if the video material is not available or incomplete? This is the question that this study strives to answer. The key concepts discussed in this article are the multimodality of audiovisual texts, context, relevance, and cognitive load. An empirical subtitling test was conducted with translation students at a Finnish university to examine these concepts and their impact on translation processes and products. Two sets of translations were analyzed with a multilayered contrastive analysis. In addition, the participants wrote short translation diaries that were analyzed using content analysis. The students’ translation diaries indicated that it is impossible to time subtitles, make line breaks, and understand references to places and characters, to name but a few difficulties reported by the participants in the test. In addition, the analysis of the diary entries revealed that translating without context reportedly increased the participants’ cognitive load, which in turn made translation processes less efficient and more time-consuming.