A system and method for converting text data having a Teletext format to text data having an Electronics Industries Associations-608 (EIA-608) format are illustrated herein. A video stream with embedded text data having a Teletext format is received by a dual mode text processing system. The dual mode text processing system, in one embodiment, extracts the text data and filters the text data to identify a desired portion using an identifier, such as a page identifier or number. The desired portion (or a copy thereof), once identified, is sent to a line break parser. The line break parser, in one embodiment, eliminates some or all of any unnecessary or unintended line breaks, as well as some or all of any extra space characters, to generate a character stream. The character stream, in one embodiment, is then converted into a EIA-608 format by a line convertor, wherein the character stream is parsed into one or more subtitle lines with a maximum character length. An end-of-line break, in one embodiment, is added to the end of each subtitle line. The output of the line convertor, in one embodiment, is buffered by a rate modulator which outputs the buffered text data at a specified rate to minimize the character transmission rate disparity between the Teletext and EIA-608 specifications. The output of the rate modulator can then be encoded into an EIA-608 format by an EIA-608 encoder. The EIA-608 encoded data can then be decoded by a closed captioning decoder and displayed as Closed Captioning text subtitles, stored in file storage, processed by a software or hardware application, and the like.