In order to answer the two following questions: How does the subtitler proceed when transfering the message (the process), and what are the characteristics of the subtitles (the product), the author has carried out an analysis of three films broadcasted on NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Company)in 1993. The three films are rather different: "Maigret chez les Flamands", quite literaly, one episode of "Allo! Allo!", a British comedy with humorous allusions to the second World War, and one episode of "Golden Years", an American thriller. The main results are: subtitling does not always give a full rendering of what is said; there is no automatic relationship between the speed of the dialogue and the rhythm of subtitling; the length of exposure can vary a great deal, even though the majority of the subtitles are exposed 3-5 seconds; the process of transfer involves four major stategies; reduction, translation, expansion, and neutralization. To achieve thier work, the subtitlers must be aware that the communicative situation is multimedial: the film itself is all, the spoken language having only a secondary function.