An Analysis of Grammatical Shift and Translation Strategy in Subtitling Dialogue in the Film Finding Nemo

Abstract

This study investigates grammatical shifts and translation strategies employed in the Indonesian subtitles of the animated film Finding Nemo. The study is motivated by the importance of subtitle translation in facilitating cross-cultural communication and ensuring that the intended meaning of audiovisual content is accurately conveyed to target audiences. The objective of this research is to identify the types of grammatical shifts occurring in the subtitle translation and to examine the translation strategies used by the translator. This research adopts a qualitative descriptive approach. The data consist of English dialogues from Finding Nemo and their corresponding Indonesian subtitles. Data were collected through documentation and note-taking techniques and analyzed using Catford’s Translation Shift Theory (1965) and Molina and Albir’s Translation Techniques Theory (2002). The findings reveal that four types of grammatical shifts are present in the subtitles, namely structure shifts, class shifts, unit shifts, and intra-system shifts. Among these, structure shifts and unit shifts occur most frequently, indicating significant syntactic differences between English and Indonesian. In addition, several translation strategies were identified, including literal translation, reduction, modulation, and adaptation, with literal translation being the most dominant strategy. The study concludes that grammatical shifts and translation strategies play a crucial role in achieving equivalence, naturalness, and readability in subtitle translation. These findings contribute to the development of Translation Studies, particularly in the field of audiovisual translation and subtitling practices.