Subtitling Strategies of Deixis in "Before Sunset (2004)" Movie Subtitles

Abstract

Translating deixis in subtitles presents significant challenges due to cultural and linguistic differences between the source language (SL) and the target language (TL), especially between English and Bahasa Indonesia. This research aims to analyze how the translator translates person deixis, place deixis, time deixis, social deixis, and discourse deixis uttered by the main characters in Before Sunset (2004). This research employed a descriptive qualitative research design to analyze what subtitling strategies are used by the translator to translate deixis in the subtitles of Before Sunset movie. This research used theory from Levinson (1983) and Gottlieb (1992) to find the answer. The finding showed that 2.395 deixis were found in Before Sunset. Of the 2.395 deixis found, the 2.395 subtitling strategies used to translate deixis consist of 2 expansion, 5 paraphrase, 1510 transfer, 2 imitation, 174 condensation, and 44 deletion. The researcher then found some strategies that Gottlieb (1992) does not propose in other translation strategies, such as 72 modulation, 511 transcription, and 75 variations with transfer strategy as the dominant strategy used by the translator (63.05%). Based on the finding, it turned out that the translator used various strategies for the same deictic word (i.e., “I” translated into “aku,” “ku-,” and “-ku”). Furthermore, the researcher found that the translator did not use transcription, dislocation, decimation, and resignation strategies in translating deixis in Before Sunset (2004) movie because all deixis in the data were common words that could be directly translated because they did not involve song lyrics or culture-specific humortranslation, did not require drastic reduction, and could be rendered without any loss of meaning.