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.
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Cited by (11)
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2024. When local goes global: English subtitles of two comedy films by Stephen Chow. Perspectives► pp. 1 ff.
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Al-Adwan, Amer & Hanan Al-Jabri
2023. The dilemma of subtitling Arabic metaphors into English: Pedagogical and practical perspectives. Ampersand 10 ► pp. 100108 ff.
2023. Türkçe-Türk İşaret Dili görsel-işitsel çeviride metafor çeviri stratejileri. RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi :37 ► pp. 1447 ff.
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.
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.
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.
Su, Ke
2021. Translation of metaphorical idioms. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 67:3 ► pp. 332 ff.
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.
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.
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