Persian-English subtitling of Iranian films deals with the challenges of understanding and transferring ostensible speech
acts (OSAs). Both linguistic and cultural variations of these elements in Persian and English are expected to create serious difficulties
for subtitlers. Although few studies with pragmatics approach have been conducted to interpret the meaning of Persian OSAs, they have been
practically ignored in the fields of translation and subtitling. To fill this gap, this study aims to descriptively investigate the
transference of the meaning of 80 Persian OSAs from selected Iranian films. It also analyses perceptions of 106 target text audiences of
subtitled OSAs by examining their level of comprehension of 14 subtitled OSAs and the effective factors on their understandings. Finally
based on the findings emerged from the descriptive and survey analyses, this study proposes a guideline for Persian-English on assisting the
transfer of the intended meaning of OSAs.
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