SLANG EXPRESSIONS IN THE ENGLISH CLUELESS MOVIE TEXT AND THEIR SUBTITLING STRATEGIES IN THE BAHASA INDONESIA SUBTITLING TEXT

Abstract

This research aims to describe the types of slang expressions found in the movie, the subtitling strategies employed by the subtitler and the degree of meaning equivalence of the slang expressions in the English Clueless movie text, and their Bahasa Indonesia subtitling text. This research was descriptive qualitative. The data were all slang expressions taken from the Clueless movie’s dialogues and its subtitle. There are two instruments of the research, the researcher and the data sheet.  The research findings show 96 data indicated as slang expressions. Slang expressions occurring in the English Clueless movie text fall into the New Invention type as the dominant type, followed by the Standard Expression type. Out of 10 strategies, there were eight subtitling strategies employed in translating the slang expressions wherein Transfer was the most dominant strategy followed by Paraphrase, Condensation, Expansion, Deletion, Decimation, Resignation and Imitation. Subsequently the translation of slang expressions in this movie have high degree of equivalence indicated by frequency of equivalent meaning compared to non-equivalent one. The implication was that the slang expressions used in the movie were successfully transferred in terms of meaning to the TL, thus made them readable to the audience.

Keywords:      slang, subtitling strategies, meaning equivalence