Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 29:3 (2017) ► pp.416–439

How metaphors are rendered in subtitles

ORCID logo | Stockholm University

Metaphors have been thoroughly studied as translation problems in recent decades. However, they are still under-researched in the subfield of audiovisual translation. This is strange since this mode of translation, particularly subtitling, has very special conditions which complicate the translating of metaphors, such as the interplay between dialogue, image and subtitles, as well as severe time and space constraints. This paper investigates how metaphors in the British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister were subtitled into Swedish. The results show that subtitlers treat metaphors as an important language feature, less prone to omission than other features. Furthermore, monocultural metaphors, which are not shared between cultures, are subtitled using more strategies than transcultural ones. Metaphors are also subtitled differently depending on the degree of entrenchment. Typically for metaphor translation, there is a loss of metaphor force, but more research is needed to ascertain whether this is media-specific or a general translation effect of growing standardization.

Keywords: audiovisual translation, subtitling, metaphors, translation strategies, transculturality, image transfer, conceptual metaphor
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Metaphors
  • 3.Translation of metaphors
    • 3.1Translation strategies for metaphors
    • 3.2Subtitling metaphors
  • 4.Material
  • 5.Method
  • 6.Results
    • 6.1Main results
    • 6.2Dead metaphors
    • 6.3Stock metaphors
    • 6.4Adapted metaphors
    • 6.5Original metaphors
    • 6.6Mixed metaphors
    • 6.7Extended metaphors
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.16038.ped
References (46)

Primary sources

Yes Prime Minister
1986–1988 Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn. UK, BBCGoogle Scholar

Series 1

Episode 1 The Grand Design” Subtitled by Lotta Almqvist No date
Episode 2 The Ministerial Broadcast” Subtitled by Ansis Grinsbergs No date
Episode 3 The Smoke Screen” Subtitled by Eva Karin Swenson No date
Episode 4 The Key” Subtitled by Annika Brandt No date
Episode 5 A Real Partnership” Subtitled by Annika Brandt No date
Episode 6 A Victory for Democracy” Subtitled by Maria Lyngstam Raud No date
Episode 7 The Bishop’s Gambit” Subtitled by John Åhlén No date
Episode 8 One of Us” Subtitled by Lotta Rossi No date

Series 2

Episode 1, “Official Secrets” Subtitled by Rickard Levin 2001.Google Scholar
Episode 2, “Man Overboard” Subtitled by Rickard Levin 2001.Google Scholar
Episode 3, “A Diplomatic Incident.” Subtitled by Fredrik Krappman 2001.Google Scholar
Episode 4, “A Conflict of Interest” Subtitled by Marie Ekenstav 2001.Google Scholar
Episode 5, “Power to the People” Subtitled by Marie Ekenstav 2001.Google Scholar
Episode 6, “The Patron of the Arts.” Subtitled by Maria Björkman 2001.Google Scholar
Episode 7, “The National Education Service” Subtitled by Maria Grimstad 2001.Google Scholar
Episode 8, “The Tangled Web” Subtitled by Jan Fransson 2001.Google Scholar

Secondary sources

Dagut, Menachem
1976 “Can “Metaphor” Be Translated?” Babel 22 (1): 21–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Díaz Cintas, Jorge, and Aline Remael
2007 Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Dickins, James
2005 “Two Models for Metaphor Translation.” Target 17 (2): 227–273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dickins, James, Sandor Hervey, and Ian Higgins
2002  Thinking Arabic Translation . A Course in Translation Method: Arabic to English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Goatly, Andrew
2007 The Language of Metaphors. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Henrik
2001 Screen Translation. Six Studies in Subtitling, Dubbing and Voice-over. Copenhagen: Center for Translation Studies, University of Copenhagen.Google Scholar
2004 “Subtitles and International Anglification.” In Worlds of Words. A Tribute to Arne Zettersten, ed. by Cay Dollerup, special issue of Nordic Journal of English Studies 3 (1): 219–230. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hermans, Theo
1999 Translation in Systems. Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Iranmanesh, Ahmad
2014 Translation of Metaphors into Persian in the Subtitling of American Movies. PhD thesis University of Malaya. [URL]. Accessed July 3, 2016.
Iranmanesh, Ahmad, and Kulwindr Kaur
2009 “The Translation of Metaphors in the Subtitling of the American Film Sin City into Persian.” In The Sustainability of the Translation Field. The 12th International Conference on Translation, 2009, ed. by Hasuria Che Omar, Haslina Haroon, and Aniswal Abd. Ghani, 164–171. Kuala Lumpur: Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia.Google Scholar
Ivarsson, Jan, and Mary Carroll
1998 Subtitling. Simrishamn: TransEdit.Google Scholar
Korp.
[URL]. Accessed February 17, 2016.
Kruger, Alet
1993 “Translating Metaphors in Narrative Fiction.” Perspectives. Studies in Translatology 1 (1): 23–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lindberg, Ib
1989 Nogle regler om TV-teksting [A few rules about TV subtitling]. [URL]. Accessed July 26, 2016.
Lindqvist, Yvonne
2002 Översättning som social praktik: Tony Morrison och Harlequinserien på svenska [Translation as a social practice: Tony Morrison and the Harlequin series in Swedish]. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm Studies in Scandinavian Philology New Series 26. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
2005 Högt och lågt i skönlitterär översättning till svenska. Uppsala: Hallgren och Fallgren.Google Scholar
Lörscher, Wolfgang
1991 Translation Performance, Translation Process, and Translation Strategies: A Psycholinguistic Investigation. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Mattsson, Jenny
2009  The Subtitling of Discourse Particles. A Corpus-Based Study of well, you know, I mean, and like, and their Swedish Translations in Ten American Films . PhD thesis University of Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Newmark, Peter
1988 A Textbook of Translation. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
2015 “On the Subtling of Visualised Metaphors.” Journal of Specialized Translation 231. [URL]. Accessed February 20, 2016.
Samaniego Fernández, Eva, Marisol Velasco Sacristán, and Pedro A. Fuertes Olivera
2003 “Translations We Live By. Metaphor Translation and Cognitive Innovation.” Paper presented at the 8th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference . July 20–25 2003 University of La Rioja, Spain.
Schäffner, Christina, and Mark Shuttleworth
2013 “Metaphor in Translation: Possibilities for Process Research.” Target 25 (1): 93–106. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Goran
2014 “Metaphor Translation in Subtitling.” In Linguistics, Culture and Identity in Foreign Language Education, ed. by Azamat Akbarov, 832–840. Sarajevo: IBU Publications.Google Scholar
Schröter, Thorsten
2005 Shun the Pun, Rescue the Rhyme? The Dubbing and Subtitling of Language-Play in Film. Karlstad: Karlstad University Studies.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon
1995 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van den Broeck, Raymond
1981 “The Limits of Translatability Exemplified by Metaphor Translation.” Poetics Today 2 (4): 73–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vinay, Jean-Paul, and Jean Darbelnet
(1958) 2000 “A Methodology for Translation.” Translated by Juan C. Sager and M. J. Hamel. In The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 84–93. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cited by (10)

Cited by 10 other publications

Hui, Isaac Ting-yan
2024. When local goes global: English subtitles of two comedy films by Stephen Chow. Perspectives ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Al-Adwan, Amer & Hanan Al-Jabri
2023. The dilemma of subtitling Arabic metaphors into English: Pedagogical and practical perspectives. Ampersand 10 ► pp. 100108 ff. DOI logo
Božović, Petar
2023. How should metaphors be rendered in audiovisual translation?. Translation and Interpreting Studies 18:3 ► pp. 471 ff. DOI logo
ŞEN BARTAN, Özgür & Ufuk ÇELEBİOĞLU
2023. Türkçe-Türk İşaret Dili görsel-işitsel çeviride metafor çeviri stratejileri. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi :37 ► pp. 1447 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Yufeng & Dechao Li
2022. Metaphor Translation as Reframing: Chinese Versus Western Stance Mediation in COVID-19 News Reports. In Translation and Interpreting in the Age of COVID-19 [Corpora and Intercultural Studies, 9], ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Yufeng & Dechao Li
2024. Multimodal metaphor (re)framing: a critical analysis of the promotional image of China’s Hubei Province in the post-pandemic era on new media. Social Semiotics 34:2 ► pp. 269 ff. DOI logo
Sanatifar, Saleh & Leelany Ayob
2022. An Intercultural Perspective on Subtitling Cultural Gaps for International Films: A Case of Fifteen Iranian Films . Journal of Intercultural Communication ► pp. 22 ff. DOI logo
Su, Ke
2021. Translation of metaphorical idioms. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 67:3 ► pp. 332 ff. DOI logo
Deckert, Mikołaj
2020. Decision-Making: Putting AVT and MA into Perspective. In The Palgrave Handbook of Audiovisual Translation and Media Accessibility [Palgrave Studies in Translating and Interpreting, ], ► pp. 483 ff. DOI logo
Soboleva, Nina Pavlovna
2019. PECULIARITIES OF METAPHORS AND SIMILES TRANSLATION IN D. TARTT’S ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NOVEL “THE GOLDFINCH”. Philology. Theory & Practice 12:6 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.