Translating Persian Emotion into English Subtitles from a Semantic Perspective: A Case of Persian Films

Abstract

A matter of great concern in audiovisual translation is considering how the emotion words can be conveyed. Creating emotional adaptability, in addition to language proficiency, cultural sensitivity, and technical aptitude is a necessary skill for every subtitler. This study analyzed, through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) method, the compatibility of the corresponding emotion words/concepts in the original (English) and subtitled versions (Persian) of ten Persian films based on Johnson-Laird and Oatley’s (1989) coherent categories and basic emotions, as well as the semantic explications. According to the results, the subtitles into Persian of the English emotion words/concepts were categorized into eleven categories, with ‘same source and target emotions’ as the most frequent category. This confirmed the efficiency of the NSM method and deemed it an efficient toolkit for subtitling emotion words/concepts, particularly the culture-specific ones. Accordingly, a three-level model was proposed for analyzing the ‘emotional adaptability’ of emotional pairs across languages.