A Study of Applied Strategies in Translating Idiomatic Expressions in Two Movie Subtitles: Bring It On & Mean Girls

Abstract

Idiomatic expressions are considered as a part of everyday language. In other words, they are the essence of each language and one of the most problematic parts to cope with, especially in the process of interlingual translation. Furthermore, there is sometimes no one-to-one equivalent for the idioms of the source language (SL) in the target language (TL). This study aimed at investigating the applied strategies in the translation of idiomatic expressions in 2 American subtitled movies, namely Mean Girls (2004) and Bring It On! (2009), through using Baker's (1992) proposed procedures in translating idiomatic expressions in translation studies. To this aim, the idiomatic expressions were extracted from the original versions of the movies and compared with the subtitled translations in Persian. Analysis of the relevant data indicated that the chi-square results were not significant at χ2 (3, N = 2) = 1.188, p = 0, considering p ˂ 0.05. Therefore, Baker's (1992) strategies were not distributed equally between these two movies. Moreover, the “omission" strategy with the frequency of 40 was the topmost used strategy in these movies.