Translation of interjections and subtitling: a study based on the BETA corpus of TV series and film subtitles

Abstract

Interjections, often considered minor and peripheral linguistic elements, have been disregarded in both linguistic and translation-studies research. The main aim of this study, in this sense, is to analyse the translation of three primary and three secondary interjections in a parallel English-Spanish corpus of subtitles. More specifically, the interjections under study were ah, wow, ugh, God, damn, and shit, and the corpus used was the BETA corpus. Four main translation solutions have been identified: literal translation, translation by an interjection with a different form, translation by a textual fragment which contains no interjection, and omission. The results of the study indicate that the most frequent translation solution in the whole corpus has been omission, followed by the translation by a different interjection. In a more fine-grained analysis, the two variables analysed, namely type of interjection and specific interjection, have been found to condition the choice of translation solution.