Azam Allahdad - M.A. Graduate from Islamic Azad University-South Tehran Branch

This article investigates the translation problem which may be caused by Culture-bound elements in subtitling with a focus on idiomatic expressions. This research will show the way the translators dealt with these cultural references and the most prevalent strategies which translators apply when subtitling cartoons from English into Persian. Anyone who knows both languages can easily identify obvious mistakes in subtitles so translator should pay particular attention to idiomatic expressions. Since in translating Idiomatic expressions the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words, the expression has to be taken as one unit. The researcher worked on the first half-hour of five randomly-selected cartoons. She looked for cultural and linguistic differences in these cartoons. The researcher applied the Venuti's (1995) strategies of domestication and foreignization. According to the obtained results, ‘Cultural Equivalence’ has been introduced as the most common strategy applied in the corpus of the research as well as each cartoon.

AVT, Cultural Equivalence, Idiomatic Expressions, Subtitling