Abstract

This paper examines the accurate translation of idioms in subtitles to enhance access to multimodal content, such as films and TV series, for people with hearing disabilities.

Captions and subtitles enable the d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing to engage with audiovisual media by conveying dialogue and plot-related sounds. Without such details, watching most TV series and movies would be an unfulfilling experience for people with hearing disabilities. However, concerns over their quality persist, as evidenced in online discussions.

Focusing on idiom translation in TV series, this study analyzes English-to-Spanish subtitles from Netflix and Amazon Prime, covering both European and Latin American Spanish. Using a cognitive and contrastive approach (Labarta Postigo, 2020, 2021), it explores how idiomatic expressions are rendered in translation.

Findings reveal a significant reduction in the figurative meaning of English idioms in Spanish subtitles, leading to notable information loss. This particularly impacts viewers with hearing disabilities, who lack access to additional information conveyed through actors’ voices and vocal cues such as intonation, accent, and speech style—essential elements that convey sociolect, humor, and character identity.

Keywords: multilingual translation, subtitling, idioms, internet-TV series, people with hearing disabilities

1. Introduction

Hearing loss can happen to anyone. According to the World Health Organization[1] more than 1.5 billion[2] people worldwide are currently affected by some sort of loss of hearing; this figure is on the rise and could exceed 2.5 billion by 2050. In addition to genetic predispositions and pathologies, the excessive loud noise we are often exposed to in our daily lives is also a cause of hearing loss; another is aging, since the chance of developing hearing loss increases as we get older.

Taking these factors into account, it is the case that an increasing number of people rely on subtitles when watching films and TV series. People with hearing loss may find it difficult to understand the dialogues of a movie or TV series, and subtitles are a great help here. In the present paper we consider Spanish-language subtitles in original English TV series. The potential viewers of these subtitles are, on the one hand, those who do not understand the original language of the series (or don’t understand it well) and who, despite listening to the dialogue in English, need to read a Spanish translation as they watch; on the other hand, those who cannot listen to the audio, in either English or Spanish, because of hearing problems. In Spain alone there are 1,230,000[3] people with different types and degrees of hearing loss or deafness.

If we look at the audio and subtitle options offered by TV and streaming services, we increasingly find audio descriptions in various languages, which allow access for blind and visually impaired people. The number of series offered in two distinct versions of Spanish (European and Latin-American) has also increased in recent years. Depending on the provider, these two versions are labeled differently. For example:

• Netflix: “European Spanish” and “Spanish”
• Amazon Prime Video: “Spanish (Spain)” and “Spanish (Latin-America)”

However, most series don’t offer a special version of translated subtitles for the d/Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing (HoH).[4] This means that both those who are d/Deaf or HoH and those who can hear the full soundtrack perfectly share the same subtitle options. Whereas accurate translation into Spanish is crucial for any subtitle users, it is especially important for those who cannot hear intonation, the voices of characters, or the soundtrack. Idiomatic expressions in subtitles, as in the dialogue itself, often provide essential insights for the audience, providing important information at the level of implicit meaning, such as irony, humor, or the personal characteristics or nature of a particular character. This paper considers the importance of accuracy in the translation of idioms in subtitles, towards enhancing access to TV series for people with hearing disabilities.

The study takes a qualitative and contrastive approach to figurative language in the form of idioms in subtitles, exploring the metaphorical dimension of idioms in English series and their translation as Spanish subtitles. A further goal of the analysis will be to look at the two varieties of Spanish in question, for which we will follow the terminology used by streaming companies to refer to these varieties: European Spanish (ESp) and Latin-American Spanish (LASp).

The paper is divided into six sections. In what follows an overview is given of idioms and their importance in translated subtitles. Section 3 then discusses different potential addressees with hearing disabilities. In section 4 the theoretical framework for the study, plus the corpus, are described. The following section presents the analysis and the results, illustrated with examples for each translation strategy. Finally, section 6 offers conclusions and some suggestions for further research.

2. The importance of idioms and their translation

According to Maria Labarta Postigo, idioms are considered by providers like Netflix to be one of the greatest challenges for translators (Labarta Postigo 2021: 3). Idioms, as with other figures of speech, transcend the literal, denotative meanings of words and phrases to provide readers with new cultural and imaginative insights. An accurate translation of these figures of speech will greatly improve the quality of subtitles and contribute to a better understanding and reception of the film material by the audience.

In order to establish the limits of the current research aims, I will provide a definition of idioms and an illustrative example. As noted in previous studies (Labarta Postigo 2020, 2021) there are many different definitions of these types of phraseological units. I will follow here Anglo-American thinking, drawing thus on a definition provided by Chitra Fernando and Roger Flavell (1981: 48): “A pure idiom is a non-literal set expression whose meaning is not a compositional function of its syntactic constituents, but which always has a homonymous literal counterpart”. In other words, idioms are set expressions whose overall meanings are not deducible from the composition or sum of their constituent parts. Most idioms are metaphorical and have a figurative meaning. In addition, they always have a homonymous literal counterpart, as the following example illustrates:

Table 1: Literal and figurative meaning of an idiomatic expression

As we can see in the above table, the metaphorical expression may add information, as well as touch on emotion and expressiveness, rather than merely convey the explicit content.

In Labarta Postigo (2020) the importance of idioms in daily communication and in film dialogues was explored. It was stressed that idioms, like other phraseological units, constitute an essential tool for characterization. The fictional dialogues in films and series also use idioms to reflect the reality of verbal communication (the conversational one). They can thus be seen as a resource to enhance expressivity in dialogue, as well as being a linguostylistic device to better convey the specific traits of characters in both audiovisual and literary texts. In addition, they may have an entertainment value and a role in conveying humor. Idioms can provide essential insights through text and convey important information at the level of implicit meaning, e.g. irony, humor, or elements of a character’s specific nature or make-up. It is very often the case that idioms are used to create a special impact in the audience in some way, and thus to ensure their attention.

Considering all these features, idioms have the potential to be far more expressively powerful than the explicit expression of meaning. As we have seen in the example above, the idiom “he/she knocked it out of the park” has the capacity to say far more, that is, to be more expressive and powerful, than simply “he/she was great”.

3.The d/Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (HoH) as addressees of subtitles in streamed series

Since the 70s special SHD (Subtitles for the HoH and the d/Deaf) have been developed for TV and other media. These subtitles were created first in the US and incorporate the advantages of open subtitles (for addressees who do not speak the language of the series) and close captions (CC, which provide text for all audible information, such as significant noises, sound effects and music, and are aimed at d/Deaf and HoH addressees). So, SHD offer the information typical of CC, as well as all other audio-related information for an audience who doesn’t speak the language of the original audio.

Despite SHD having already been developed, and being offered widely in video games, most of the series and movies provided by the major streaming companies do not offer special versions of subtitles for people with hearing disabilities. There are economic motivations for this. On the one hand, people with hearing disabilities are in the minority, and on the other, there is a wide spectrum of hearing impairments, from HoH to Deaf. According to Josélia Neves (2005: 309-310):

While it is still commercially unviable to offer a number of different SDH subtitling solutions for the same product, SHD will have to provide subtitles that will be useful to a wide variety of addressees, including hearers, as is the case of people who use SHD for language learning or because of environmental noise, for instance. It is a fact that, by providing subtitles for all, not everybody is getting their due.

In another study, Neves (2007: 98) states that although open subtitles in foreign audiovisual products are clearly insufficient to meet the needs of the d/Deaf, they do provide the basic information for these viewers to be able to follow the content. Therefore, so-called “open subtitles”, that is, general multilingual subtitles, are normally the only way to access film material in a foreign language, and thus are used by hearing, d/Deaf and HoH viewers.

To corroborate this, I surveyed 14 d/Deaf and HoH people who communicate in different kinds of language, such as sign language as their first language, lip readers, users of oral language, etc., about the kind of subtitles they use when watching TV series. Their responses indicated that they usually access a foreign film or series using the subtitles offered in their native language, Spanish, thus using the same subtitles as people without hearing problems. A majority (86 per cent) reported using these Spanish open subtitles, whereas 14 per cent used either English CC or Spanish open subtitles depending on the series.

Everything points to the fact that open subtitles (hereafter subtitles) will continue to be the main form of access for the greatest number of addressees, including the d/Deaf, HoH, and listening ones.

In order to obtain further information about addressees’ preferences with regard to figurative language in the translated subtitles, I conducted a pilot survey with the same 14 d/Deaf or HoH respondents[5]. They were asked to complete a 10-item questionnaire about the kinds of subtitles they preferred. Each question had two options for Spanish subtitles translated from English: one contained an idiomatic expression with a figurative meaning; the other was a non-idiomatic expression and the translation was of the explicit meaning of the original English. The goal of this survey was to reveal the opinions of these viewers of series with a hearing impairment and who use the subtitles designed for all audiences. More than half of the respondents expressed a definite preference for subtitles with idiomatic expressions. Eight of 14 chose idiomatic expressions in between 70 per cent and 100 per cent of cases, while for the other six respondents, this preference fell to 40 per cent or less. Furthermore, there were some additional comments about accurate translations. For example, one respondent observed that the translations in the Spanish subtitles should be as close as possible to the original dialogue in English and not simplified in any way.

Of course we cannot draw firm conclusions from such a small survey, but it does give us an indication of the preferences of this specific group of subtitle users/readers, the majority of whom seen to prefere metaphorical translations of the original English idioms. However, more extensive and detailed research would be needed to draw solid conclusions here.

4. Methodology and corpus

The theoretical framework of the current research is based on George Lakoff´s Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff 1993; Lakoff and  Johnson 1980); it also embraces Raymond W. Gibbs’ work on metaphor and culture (Gibbs 1996, 2001; Gibbs, Bogdanovich et al. 1997) and on idioms and idiomatic/literal meaning (Gibbs, Nayak and Cutting 1989; Gibbs and O’Brien 1990).

Labarta Postigo (2020) developed a methodology to analyze translation strategies used in producing English subtitles for original movies in Spanish and German, drawing on approaches to various translation types and goals (Baker 1992; Conca and Guia, 2014; Corpas, 2000; Díaz Cintas and Anderman, 2009; Díaz Cintas and Remael, 2014; Gottlieb 1992, 1994; Newmark 1988; Oltra, 2015; Trim 2007. In Labarta Postigo (2021), I applied the methodology focusing on the four most frequent categories or strategies, in an analysis of TV series: Total Equivalence (TE), Partial Equivalence (PE), Omission (O), and Explicit meaning (EM). Drawing on this previous work, the current analysis will include two parts: a presentation of the strategies based on a qualitative analysis, followed by a comparative analysis of the translations from English into ESp and LASp.

In the qualitative analysis examples will be given of the following strategies, which use figurative meaning in the translation in the first place:

• Total equivalence (TE): This is, of course, the ideal translation, in which an exact metaphorical equivalent in the TL is found.
• Partial equivalence (PE): Somewhere between total equivalence and an absence of equivalence. The strategy involves translating the idiom of the source language (SL) into a similar, but not identical, idiomatic expression in the target language (TL). The two idioms have identical target domains, but do not fully correspond in their metaphorical structure, image, or source domains.

Following this are examples of strategies in which there is no idiomatic expression in the translation:

• Omission (O): to omit an idiom from the SL in translating it into the TL.
• Explicit meaning (EM): to leave out the idiom from the SL and to translate it using a word or non-idiomatic expression which coincides with the idiom’s figurative meaning.

This methodology will be used to analyze the current corpus as a means of assessing the similarities and differences between the original dialogues and the translated subtitles, as well as between the two Spanish varieties.

The corpus used in this analysis comprises a selection of idiomatic or metaphorical expressions that appear frequently in TV series. Previous studies (Labarta Postigo 2021, 2022) on the translation of idioms from English to Spanish and other languages in film material highlighted the need to develop a larger corpus, towards conducting a more exhaustive analysis. In the current study the reference corpus has been greatly expanded, using data from The TV Corpus[6], one of the largest available corpora of informal English, at 325 million words. To this I have added my own corpus, the result of several previous studies on subtitled TV series from 2000 to date. The contrastive analysis is based in 300 idiomatic expressions from following series, which provide subtitles in both Spanish varieties: Homecoming (2018-2020), The Diplomat (2023), The Man in the High Castle (2015-2019) and The Night Agent (2023). Further details about the series are listed in section 7.

5. Analysis

The qualitative analysis of the corpus focuses on the use of metaphorical or idiomatical expressions in the translated subtitles. The first classification establishes whether or not a translation includes an idiomatic expression. For each of these two options we will present two possible strategies, as explained in section 4, above. To illustrate the results, some examples of each strategy will be presented in the sections 5.1 and 5.2.

The second step will be a contrastive analysis of the translations English-ESp and English-LASp. The results of the quantitative analysis will be presented in section 5.3.

5.1. Translations with figurative meaning

5.1.1. Total Equivalence (TE)

The TE strategy consists of translating the original idiom using a fully equivalent one in the TL, as in the following example:

Table 2: Example “to pull some strings” (series The Man in the High Castle).

In this example the idiom in both languages is the same. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the meaning of the idiomatic expression “to pull the strings” is: “to secretly use the influence you have over important people in order to get something or to help someone”. An identical idiom exists in Spanish: “tirar de los hilos”. This is an idiomatic expression, and indeed can be found in several languages; as such it belongs to the category of widespread idioms, that is, idioms that exist in various languages with the same or similar structure and figurative meaning (Piirainen, 2006: 158-159).

Other examples from a total of 25 widespread idioms translated as TE in the analysed corpus are as follows:

Table 3: Examples of the translations of widespread idioms

We also find idiomatic expressions in the analized corpus which use strong language and are translated as TE into Spanish:     

Table 4: Examples of the translation strategy TE with strong language

A total of six TE translations contain strong language. Although the use of strong language is not the focus of our study, we found it interesting to note that sometimes the strategy TE also includes the translation of those expressions.

5.1.2 Partial Equivalence (PE)

This strategy consists of translating the original English idiom into a different idiomatic expression in the target language (TL). That is, the form and/or structure in the TL varies but the figurative or metaphorical meaning is preserved, as in the following case:

Table 5: Example “to be nuts” (series Homecoming)

In the example of table 5, both idiomatic expressions serve to ask if someone is crazy. Yet the metaphors in English and Spanish are completely different. A literal translation of the Spanish one would be “is your pot/kettle gone?”, which makes no sense in English.

We find several examples of this strategy in each of the analyzed series. As in the previous tables, table 6 shows the expressions in the SL English on the left, and the subtitles in the TL Spanish on the right:

Table 6: Examples of the translation strategy Partial Equivalence (PE)

This strategy is in general much more frequent than the previous one, reaching a total of 60 examples in the translated subtitles. It is not surprising, since finding a total equivalence is only possible in the case of widespread idioms, and many idioms are not. In section 5.3 we will discuss these data in more detail, as well as the results of the contrastive analysis between the two translation pairs.

5.2 Translations without figurative meaning

5.2.1 Omission (O)

This strategy (O) consists of omitting the translation of the original idiom. One of the few examples found in our data is given here:

Table 7: Example “to piss someone off” (series The Diplomat)

The first sentence with an idiomatic expression is wholly absent in the Spanish translation. This strategy is rare in our corpus, since there are just three examples, yielding fewer than for the other types.

5.2.2 Explicit Meaning (EM)

This strategy consists of translating the original idiom by means of a non-idiomatic expression in the target language, with this translation explaining or paraphrasing the figurative meaning of the original. Hence, no idiomatic or metaphorical expression appears in the subtitles translated into the target language; here, the subtitles have no figurative sense at all, as can be seen in the following example:

Table 8: Example “to touch base” (series The Diplomat)

This idiom is a sporting metaphor from baseball. “To touch base” is a colloquial American English expression, which is culturally specific and has no equivalent with a figurative meaning in Spanish. The metaphor relates to a situation in baseball in which both runners and fielders have to literally “touch the base” in order to be safe (runners) or to eliminate the running player (fielders). In terms of figurative usage, the Cambridge Dictionary, the Collins English Dictionary and the Merrian-Webster Dictionary agree that “to touch base” means to establish contact or communicate with someone, to find out how a person is doing or what he/she thinks about something. Some idioms are culturally specific and thus the only possible translation is to paraphrase or explain them, as in the example in table 8, above: The translated subtitle conveys the figurative meaning of the metaphor only.

However, the presence of untranslatable, unique or culturally-bound idioms is not the only reason to use this strategy. Explaining the meaning is often a choice made by the translator, as we will see in some examples in section 5.3, below.

The following table shows other examples of the EM strategy in the four analyzed series. The original English CC are on the left side. We find on the right side the Spanish subtitles with the corresponding English translation by the author in brackets:

Table 9: Examples of the translation strategy Explicit Meaning (EM)

This strategy is the most frequent one with a total of 114 examples in the translated subtitles. However, the frequency is considerably different in the subtitles translated into each of the two varieties of Spanish. Section 5.3 will further explain these data and provide a detailed explanation of the results of the contrastive analysis.

5.3 Contrastive Analysis of the two translation pairs: English to European Spanish (ESp) vs. English to Latin-American Spanish (LASp)

300 idiomatic expressions were selected from drama series in which subtitles in both Spanish varieties were provided. These included four series that were on air at the time this study was carried out (two from Amazon Prime and two from Netflix). Of the 300 expressions selected, one hundred were the original English idioms, plus the corresponding translations into ESp and LASp. A quantitative study was then carried out to compare the strategies used for the translation of idiomatic expressions in both the Spanish varieties. The following graph shows the results of that analysis:

Figure 1. Results of the contrastive analysis

One of the most surprising findings was the marked difference between the two varieties in terms of idiomaticity. The most frequently used strategy in LASp is explicit meaning (EM): 72 per cent of the subtitles translated into this variety involved no metaphorical or idiomatic expressions; a further 2 per cent were omissions (O); this leaves just 26 per cent of translations with figurative content, little more than a quarter of the total number of idiomatic expressions in the source language.

In the ESp subtitles the translations with figurative meaning represent a total of 59 per cent (41 per cent partial equivalences and 15 per cent total equivalences), more than double what was observed in LASp. By contrast, in the ESp subtitles EM was used in only 40 per cent of cases.

Let us illustrate these differences with some examples:

Figure 2: Example from the series The Diplomat, Netflix, Season 1, Episode 8

The following table shows the full text of the English subtitles containing the idiom in figure 2, as well as the ESp and LASp translations:

Table 10: Example from the series The Diplomat, Netflix, S1, E8

As we see above, “Hacer la pelota a alguien” is an idiomatic expression with a similar meaning to the English one, while “adular a alguien” means to flatter someone. Despite not using strong language, the ESp translation is metaphorical and has a figurative meaning. Meanwhile, the LASp subtitle uses the idea of flattering. Furthermore, the verb “adular” is from a rather formal register in Spanish, and this does not accurately translate the colloquial tone of the English idiom.

Table 11: Example of the Series The Night Agent, Netflix, T1, E9

The idiomatic expression in the English CC is a variation of the idiom “to take something with a grain of salt”, that is, to view something with skepticism. By exaggerating the normal quantity of salt in the idiom to “a giant bucket” the character speaking here expresses her extreme mistrust of her interlocutor in a very sarcastic way.

In the ESp subtitles, the expression "with feet together" alludes to a very old idiom, which according to the Dictionary Real Academia Española (RAE) means "without any doubt". This idiom is usually used when one has blind faith in something or someone. Aligned with the verb “forgive”, the phrase conveys a humorous note, which does in part translate the figurative meaning of the English CC. Thus, whereas this translation lacks the overall force of the sarcasm in the original, the irony is maintained. Less expressive is the explicit translation of the LASp.

Table 12: Example of the Series The Man in the High Castle, Amazon Prime, T3, E1

In the above example the translation into ESp is a TE. The idiom and the bad language are translated into an identical Spanish expression. However, the LASp subtitles conveys the meaning of the phrase with a euphemism and avoids translating the word “shit”. The result is an interpretation of the original English, toning down the language, and the translation thus lacks expressive force: “debes saber cosas de todos allí” (you must know things about everyone there).

Figure 3. Example from the series Homecoming, Amazon Prime, Season 1, Episode 5

The following table shows the full text of the English subtitles containing the idiom in figure 3, as well as the corresponding translations into ESp and LASp:

Table 13: Example of the series Homecoming, Amazon Prime, T1

In the scene shown in figure 3 the main character of the series is being threatened with being fired by her boss. He is very angry and uses an idiomatic expression to make this threat: “you will be out on your ass”. The translation into ESp “te pondré de patitas en la calle” is an idiomatic one, which literally means “I will put you out on your little legs on the street”. A similar idiom in English would be “I will kick you to the curb” or more simply “you’ll be out on the street”. Despite not containing the forceful word “ass” of the original, the ESp subtitles reflect a touch of expressivity through the humor of the diminutive “patitas” (little legs). The LASp option “te despediré de inmediato” simply means you will be fired immediately.

6. Conclusion

The results of the analysis show a general trend towards a reduction of idiomatic and metaphorical expressions in the translated Spanish subtitles, with significant differences between the two varieties analyzed.

Turning to the overall results, only 42.5 per cent of the 200 translations into the two varieties are idiomatic; that is, far less than half of the Spanish subtitles preserve the figurative meaning of the English CC. In terms of translation strategies, the most frequent one with idiomatic content is PE, at an average of 30 per cent, followed by TE, at 12.5 per cent. The number of omissions is very low (1.5 per cent), whereas the number of explicit meanings is the highest of all (112 of the 200 translations). On the one hand, the fact that almost all the idioms have been translated in some way, and only a few have been omitted, is a positive finding with regard to accuracy and quality. On the other hand, 56 per cent of the idioms are translated through expressions with no metaphorical, idiomatic or figurative meaning at all; thus, a possible loss of part of the meaning affects more than half of the translations in our corpus. It seems clear, then, that a greater emphasis on improving the translation of idioms would enhance the overall quality of subtitles in these data.

Reductions in the figurative meaning of the original subtitles differs in the two Spanish varieties under investigation. Indeed, figure 1 illustrates how striking these differences are. The contrastive analysis shows that in the translations into LASp, the explicit meaning strategy is used in 72 per cent of cases, that is, an increase of 32 per cent on those translated into ESp. The LASp subtitles, then, offer far less idiomaticity and fewer metaphorical expressions than the ESp ones.

As noted in section 2, idioms are used frequently in dialogues, adding expressive force and drawing a character’s personal speaking style into the action. Sometimes the use of idioms, or a certain kind of idiom, is indeed a recognizable part of a character’s identity. These features of conversation may be lost when the EM strategy is used for the translation, and the fact is that more than half of the idioms overall, and almost three-quarters in the LASp data, were indeed translated by omitting the idiomatic/metaphorical meaning itself.

The use of the EM strategy might lead to an easier and faster literal understanding on the part of viewers, but it might also have negative consequences in terms of the loss of other levels of meaning. Furthermore, omitting the idiom itself implies a loss of meaning, including information relating to register, humor, or the features of a specific character in the action, in that an idiom tells us something about a speaker: their sociolect, idiolect and style, among many other factors.

In the survey of a group of d/Deaf and HoH people, more than half of the respondents were in favour of translating most idioms using figurative language. Larger and more detailled surveys are needed to shed further light on this issue. Nevertheless, it is important to underline the significance of the opinions of this sector of the TV audience; although a minority of the overall audience share, their judgements are of disproportionate relevance, given the greater degree to which they rely on subtitles when watching TV.

The approach to translation taken in this study, as well as the analysis of findings, have raised new questions that merit further investigation through a more detailed exploration of the reception of subtitles among the d/Deaf and HoH. A survey of a larger number of addressees here would serve to support the findings presented above. Additionally, more work in this area would help us to better understand the reduction of figurative meaning in translated subtitles in general, and in Latin-American Spanish subtitles in particular.

About the author(s)

María Labarta Postigo is a Professor at the Faculty of Philology, Translation, and Communication at the University of Valencia (Spain). She graduated in Hispanic and Germanic Philology at the Free University of Berlin, where she also completed her doctoral studies in Linguistics. She has professional experience teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Spain, Germany, and Brazil. She has conducted research projects at universities in several countries around the world, including Argentina (UBA), Brazil (UERJ, UFF, UFBA, and UFAL), Germany (FU Berlin), New Zealand (UC Christchurch), Norway (UiO) and the USA (UC Berkeley and CUNY). Her main research areas are Foreign Language Teaching, Culture and Interculturality, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Multilingual Translation.

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