Translation of Culture-bound Items: A Case Study of the Movie "sensitive floor"

Abstract

Culture-bound elements are of great significance in translation, especially when it comes to translating popular media, such as movies. The present study investigated strategies and techniques used in translating expressions containing culture-bound elements in the English subtitle of the Iranian movie, "طبقه حساس" )Sensitive Floor(, Crystal Simorgh Award winner for best actor in the Fajr Film Festival and Grand Cinema of Iran, in 2014. Based on Pedersen’s (2005) taxonomy, Persian sentences and expressions which contained culture-bound items were extracted and compared with their English counterparts in the subtitles. The results of the analyses revealed that out of the 40 culture-bound items extracted, 15 used source language oriented strategies (including 4 retention, 2 specification, 9 direct translation) and 25 used target language oriented strategies (including 7 generalization, 8 substitution and 10 omission). It was also concluded that direct translation and omission of cultural expressions could result in strange meanings and consequently, misunderstanding of the message by the audience in the target language community and should be avoided whenever possible.