SUBTITLING STRATEGIES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLANG EXPRESSIONS IN INDONESIAN SUBTITLES TEXT OF LEE’S BARBERSHOP 3: THE NEXT CUT

Abstract

This research aims to describe (1) the types of African-American slang expressions found in the film, (2) the subtitling strategies in translating the African-American slang expressions applied by the subtitler, and (3) the degree of meaning equivalence of the African-American slang expressions in the English movie text of the Barbershop: The Next Cut and their Bahasa Indonesia subtitling text.

            This research was a descriptive qualitative approach. The data were all African-American slang expressions in the form of words, phrases, and sentences. The main instrument of the researcher was the researcher himself, while the data sheet was employed as the secondary instrument. The data were categorized based on three theories, those are: the slang type proposed by Willis, subtitling strategies proposed by Gottlieb, the degree of meaning equivalence by Bell. The trustworthiness of the data was enhanced this research by using triangulation.

            This research showed three findings. The first one is the African-American slang expressions found in the Barbershop: The Next Cut film showed that Standard Word is used slightly more than New Invention. The narrow gap between the two types indicates that the film tried to balance the use of the established words and the new ones. The second one is concerned with the subtitling strategies applied by the subtitler in translating the African-American slang expressions. Seven strategies were applied with Transfer being the most dominant and then followed by Expansion, Imitation, Paraphrase, Condensation, Deletion and then Decimation. The occurrence of Transfer as the most used strategy indicates that the subtitler attempted to maintain the meaning and the form of the African-American slang expressions so that the message can be delivered well. The last one is concerned with the degree of meaning equivalence in the translation of the African-American slang expressions in the Barbershop: The Next Cut film. Partly-equivalent meaning appeared the most, followed by Different meaning, No meaning and Fully-equivalent meaning. Such a phenomenon indicated that the subtitler succeeds in translating the African-American slang expressions although they were not translated into Indonesian slang expressions.

Keywords: Slang, slang types, subtitling, subtitling strategies, meaning equivalence, Barbershop: The Next Cut