Translation of Thai cultural terms in English subtitles in the movie, “Love Destiny: The Movie”

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze techniques and methods used in translating with cultural terms in the translation of the script of the movie, "Love Destiny 2", which was shown in 2022. The movie was based on a retro-romantic comedy film jointly produced by GDH and Broadcast Thai Television Company Limited. The study includes 58 Thai subtitle samples, which were analyzed using eight translation strategies of non-equivalence at the word level proposed by Baker (1992). The research found 58 cultural items translated according to Baker’s strategies. The result of this study revealed that the translator mostly used related words to paraphrase cultural terms in the source text (25.86%), followed by translation by paraphrasing cultural terms using unrelated words (20.69%) and by using more neutral/less expressive words (18.97%), respectively. The translator did not implement all translation strategies suggested by Baker (1992) since the research found no use of translation by using illustration. For further studies, there should be more analysis of translation theories given by other theorists. In addition, further research should be conducted using different movie scripts translated by other translators to understand how translators deal with cultural differences in translation.