A Description of Translation Norms in the English Subtitle of Three Persian Movies

The present study aimed at providing a description of employed norms in translation of cultural related items by Iranian translators of English in the process of subtitling three movies from Persian to English. According to the emphasis of Khazayee Far on cultural related issues, idiomatic expressions, collocations and cultural specific words were considered as the items of the framework. The material of the study consisted of three Persian movies: The Song of Sparrows, The Actor, Ice Flower. Each item of framework was compared and contrasted with the provided English equivalence in target language and five main strategies employed by Iranian translators were identified: Transfer, paraphrase, over-translation, under-translation, and mistranslation. The researcher concluded that under-translation strategy with 46% was the first employed strategy and thorough transferring of the form and meaning was the second strategy employed. Over-translation was the last employed strategy with 2%. The results revealed that Iranian translators of English had under-translated the three items of the framework .The strategy of direct translation (borrowing) was employed as the fourth strategy for cultural specific words which is the indication of the translator’s tendency to foreignise the cultural specific words. The researcher concluded that high percentage of under-translation strategy was conformed to view points of Gottelieb (1992) and Delabastita (1989) about the condensing nature of subtitling.

A Description of Translation Norms in the English Subtitle of Three Persian Movies Keywords:

Translation norms , Audiovisual translation , Subtitling , Employed strategies in subtitling