1. Crash happens only in the case when poppler-data decoding tables are not installed (but they are indeed optional, one may not install them as result of licensing problem)
2. Crash happens as result of unchecked zero pointer usage 
3. Crash happens for the latest stable version, as well, as for previous versions
4. call stack is as following:

Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0  TextPage::beginWord (this=0x805dfb0, state=0x807ee30, x0=346.49509999999992, y0=717.5299) at TextOutputDev.cc:1958
1958      if (state->getFont()->getType() == fontType3) {
(gdb) bt
#0  TextPage::beginWord (this=0x805dfb0, state=0x807ee30, x0=346.49509999999992, y0=717.5299) at TextOutputDev.cc:1958
#1  0xb7e77bfe in TextPage::addChar (this=0x805dfb0, state=0x807ee30, x=346.49509999999992, y=717.5299, dx=0, dy=0, c=0, nBytes=1,
    u=0x80d8d48, uLen=2) at TextOutputDev.cc:2074
#2  0xb7e77d24 in TextOutputDev::endMarkedContent (this=0x805e310, state=0x807ee30) at TextOutputDev.cc:4663
#3  0xb7e00165 in Gfx::opEndMarkedContent (this=0x805ed78, args=0xbff34aa0, numArgs=0) at Gfx.cc:4200
#4  0xb7e027a1 in Gfx::execOp (this=0x805ed78, cmd=0xbff34c40, args=0xbff34aa0, numArgs=<value optimized out>) at Gfx.cc:766
#5  0xb7e0296d in Gfx::go (this=0x805ed78, topLevel=1) at Gfx.cc:637
#6  0xb7e085b7 in Gfx::display (this=0x805ed78, obj=0xbff34d1c, topLevel=1) at Gfx.cc:606
#7  0xb7e47206 in Page::displaySlice (this=0x8060990, out=0x805e310, hDPI=72, vDPI=72, rotate=0, useMediaBox=1, crop=0, sliceX=-1,
    sliceY=-1, sliceW=-1, sliceH=-1, printing=0, catalog=0x805ded8, abortCheckCbk=0, abortCheckCbkData=0x0, annotDisplayDecideCbk=0,
    annotDisplayDecideCbkData=0x0) at Page.cc:438
#8  0xb7e472d5 in Page::display (this=0x8060990, out=0x805e310, hDPI=72, vDPI=72, rotate=0, useMediaBox=1, crop=0, printing=0,
    catalog=0x805ded8, abortCheckCbk=0, abortCheckCbkData=0x0, annotDisplayDecideCbk=0, annotDisplayDecideCbkData=0x0) at Page.cc:367
#9  0xb7e49e9e in PDFDoc::displayPage (this=0x805db88, out=0x805e310, page=5, hDPI=72, vDPI=72, rotate=0, useMediaBox=1, crop=0,
    printing=0, abortCheckCbk=0, abortCheckCbkData=0x0, annotDisplayDecideCbk=0, annotDisplayDecideCbkData=0x0) at PDFDoc.cc:391
#10 0xb7e49f3a in PDFDoc::displayPages (this=0x805db88, out=0x805e310, firstPage=1, lastPage=10, hDPI=72, vDPI=72, rotate=0,
    useMediaBox=1, crop=0, printing=0, abortCheckCbk=0, abortCheckCbkData=0x0, annotDisplayDecideCbk=0, annotDisplayDecideCbkData=0x0)
    at PDFDoc.cc:406
#11 0x08049b48 in main (argc=Cannot access memory at address 0x0
) at pdftotext.cc:276


state->getFont() returns zero, which is not checked.

5. grep shows that there is a number of such places in the poppler code:

poppler/ABWOutputDev.cc:  height = state->getFont()->getAscent() * state->getTransformedFontSize();
poppler/CairoOutputDev.cc:  LOG(printf ("updateFont() font=%s\n", state->getFont()->getName()->getCString()));
poppler/CairoOutputDev.cc:  if (state->getFont()->getType() == fontType3)
poppler/Gfx.cc:  wMode = state->getFont()->getWMode();
poppler/PSOutputDev.cc:        state->getFont()->getID()->num, state->getFont()->getID()->gen,
poppler/PSOutputDev.cc:  if (state->getFont()->getWMode()) {
poppler/TextOutputDev.cc:  if (state->getFont()->getType() == fontType3) {

6. Proposed patch solves the crash problem, while I'm not sure that functionally it does a right thing - it tries to substitude absent font with other one...

 diff -Naur  poppler/TextOutputDev.orig.cc poppler/TextOutputDev.cc
--- poppler/TextOutputDev.orig.cc       2008-10-12 09:56:41.000000000 +0000
+++ poppler/TextOutputDev.cc    2008-10-12 09:58:19.000000000 +0000
@@ -1953,9 +1953,23 @@
     return;
   }

-  // compute the rotation
-  state->getFontTransMat(&m[0], &m[1], &m[2], &m[3]);
-  if (state->getFont()->getType() == fontType3) {
+  GfxFont * gfxFont = state->getFont();
+  if ( !gfxFont )
+  {
+    if ( !curFont )
+    {
+        updateFont(state);
+    }
+    gfxFont = curFont->gfxFont;
+  }
+  if ( !gfxFont )
+  {
+    //What else can I do???
+    return ;
+  }
+   // compute the rotation
+   state->getFontTransMat(&m[0], &m[1], &m[2], &m[3]);
+   if (gfxFont->getType() == fontType3) {
     fontm = state->getFont()->getFontMatrix();
     m2[0] = fontm[0] * m[0] + fontm[1] * m[2];
     m2[1] = fontm[0] * m[1] + fontm[1] * m[3];