Translation strategies in the Indonesian subtitles of the Women Talking movie: A study based on Gottlieb’s translation theory

DOMINANCE OF MODULATION AND REDUCTION TECHNIQUES IN THE ARABIC–INDONESIAN SUBTITLE TRANSLATION OF THE FILM NAGA (2023) ON THE NETFLIX PLATFORM

Translating Arabic film subtitles into Indonesian presents unique challenges, particularly in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps on global streaming platforms like Netflix. The film Naga (2023) serves as an intriguing subject due to its combination of Saudi Arabian religious-cultural discourse and the horror genre. This study aims to analyze the translation techniques employed in the Indonesian subtitles of the first 30 minutes of the film. This research employs a qualitative descriptive method using document analysis (observation and note-taking) on the subtitle data. The data were analyzed using the translation techniques framework proposed by Molina and Albir (2002). The analysis of 187 dialogue data revealed the application of six translation techniques: modulation, reduction, particularization, adaptation, borrowing, and transposition. Modulation was the most dominant technique (36.4%), followed by reduction (31.6%) and particularization (17.1%). The prominence of modulation and reduction indicates the translator's strong effort to adapt the characters' emotional expressions into the Indonesian cultural context, while simultaneously considering the spatial and temporal constraints (Characters Per Second) of the subtitle screen. These findings affirm that subtitle translation is not merely a linguistic transfer of meaning, but a cultural and contextual negotiation process to ensure the readability and acceptability for the target audience.

Subtitle Translation Errors in There Will Be Blood Film: A Corpus-Based Study

Subtitles play a vital role in assisting audiences to understand foreign-language films and access their cultural content. Despite the growing interest in audiovisual translation, studies investigating translation errors in Indonesian subtitles using the updated American Translators’ Association (ATA) Framework remain under-explored. This study aims to investigate the types of translation errors in Indonesian subtitles of the There Will Be Blood film using ATA Framework version 2022. Employing a qualitative descriptive method, this corpus-based study identified and categorized errors into five types, namely faithfulness, literalness, terminology, omission, and misunderstanding. The data consisted of subtitle transcripts of the film in English and Indonesian languages. The data collection involved watching the film with subtitles, identifying errors, and categorizing subtitles according to the ATA framework. The data were analyzed through a content analysis. Findings revealed that faithfulness errors were the most prevalent. These errors often resulted from translators failing to preserve the original context and meaning significantly altering the narrative. Literalness errors, resulting from overly direct translations, ignored idiomatic expressions and cultural nuances leading to awkward and unnatural dialogue. Terminology errors occurred due to incorrect translations of industry-specific terms. Omission and misunderstanding errors, though less frequent, also impacted on the narrative's integrity. The study concludes that a deep understanding of both source and target languages and cultural contexts is essential for improving subtitle accuracy and audience's understanding of the film.

JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Preserving Satire Across Modalities: Subtitling Strategies and Rhetorical–Pragmatic Preservation in Arabic–Indonesian Audiovisual Translation

Satirical utterances in audiovisual texts convey criticism through implicit meanings, rhetorical contrasts, and contextual cues, making them vulnerable to shifts in cross-cultural subtitling. This exploratory case study examines how Arabic satirical implicatures are preserved, reformulated, or weakened in the official Indonesian subtitles of From the Ashes: The Pit. The data comprised 23 satirical utterances identified through exhaustive criterion-based sampling of the entire film. The Arabic dialogue was manually transcribed, verified by an Arabic-language specialist, aligned with scene timestamps, and compared with the Indonesian subtitles. Analysis combined Gottlieb’s subtitling strategies, Simpson’s model of satirical discourse, Zabalbeascoa’s functional approach, Relevance Theory, and audiovisual constraints. Four strategies were identified: transfer (11), paraphrase (9), condensation (2), and resignation (1). The corpus included irony (10), cynicism (7), and sarcasm (6). The findings suggest that satirical implicatures were preserved when the subtitle retained the target of criticism, evaluative stance, and sufficient verbal or audiovisual cues. Paraphrase and condensation could also maintain satire when formal changes preserved these functional elements, whereas resignation produced the clearest contextual ambiguity. These findings are limited to this single-film exploratory corpus.

Subtitling Strategies in the Case of English-Indonesian Fansub of Youtube Podcast Video Entitled Catching Up: The Boyz | Kpdb Ep. #80

In producing subtitles, there are several strategies that can be used by the subtitlers to overcome certain problems encountered in rendering the source language. This study focused on the subtitling strategies used by the fansubber and the readability of the Indonesian subtitles in the selected podcast video. This study used qualitative data that were taken from the utterances of the speakers and the Indonesian subtitles of a YouTube podcast video entitled Catching Up: The Boyz | KPDB Ep. #80, and quantitative data by using a scale questionnaire. Documentation and note-taking technique were used in collecting the data. Subtitling strategies proposed by Gottlieb (1992) and the readability rating instrument by Nababan (2012) were applied. The results show that from 277 data, eight subtitling strategies were applied, they are deletion (74 data), paraphrase (62 data), condensation (51 data), expansion (35 data), transfer 24 (data), imitation and resignation respectively in 15 data, and transcription strategy in one data. The results of the readability assessment show a high overall average score of 2,985 from the maximum score of 3. This study also found several factors that influenced the readability of the subtitles, such as word choices, subtitles duration, inflexible wordings as the result of direct translations, less precise word deletion, line breaks due to character limitations, and cultural differences. Keywords: Subtitling strategies, Readability, Subtitles, Podcast video

Analysis of Modulation Translation Techniques in the Film Subtitles of "Under Paris"

This study aims to describe the forms of modulation translation techniques applied in the subtitles of the film Under Paris and analyze the effect of their application on the shift in meaning between French as the source language and Indonesian as the target language. This study focuses on modulation techniques based on the theoretical framework of Vinay and Darbelnet and the adjustment of meaning based on the theory of Nida and Taber. The method used is descriptive qualitative with data sources in the form of dialogue in the subtitles of the film Under Paris (2024). Data were collected through listening and note-taking techniques, then analyzed interpretively. The results of the study are that all seven forms of modulation techniques according to Vinay and Darbelnet were found in the data, namely abstract-concrete shifts, cause-effect, whole-part, positive-negative, active-passive, physical-psychological, and space-time. Of the total data analyzed, 40 data were found containing modulation techniques, with positive-negative modulation as the most dominant form. In addition, the application of modulation techniques shows a close relationship with the adjustment of meaning as stated by Nida and Taber. Although not all semantic adjustment categories appear in every modulation data, context-based adjustments are the most frequently used category, indicating the importance of situational and visual context in subtitle translation. The study concludes that modulation techniques play a significant role in producing subtitle translations that are natural, acceptable, and appropriate to the audiovisual context.