Abstract

This study examines the translation strategy of culturemes in the English subtitle of Parasite, a Korean movie by director Bong Joon-ho. The multi-award winning black comedy deals with the conflict between the rich and the poor, a topic which people in every culture can relate to. Together with the timely theme, the film’s English subtitle is considered to have contributed to its global success. This study shows that Darcy Paquet, the subtitle translator of Parasite, carefully chose the translation strategy working in close cooperation with the director. The interviews and press clips on the translator and the director revealed that they actively communicated on how to translate the local elements in the movie into English subtitle so that audiences in other cultures can easily understand the movie, which is the macro translation strategy. This paper categorized 22 culturemes in the movie into 5 groups and found out that 6 different tactics under 2 broad categories of conservation and substitution were used for translation. The analysis shows that although various tactics were used at the micro level, the subtitle as a whole worked in a way to enhance the understanding of foreign audiences, with the aim of domestication at the macro level.

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