A Study of translation universals in subtitles translated from Thai to English: a lexical bundle approach

Abstract

Translation involves negotiating between preserving source-language features and adapting them to target-language norms, a process believed to give rise to Translation Universals (TUs), linguistic features distinguishing translated from non-translated language. Previous TU research has focused primarily on written texts, quantitative linguistic measures, and Western language pairs. To extend this research scope, the present study investigates Thai-to-English subtitles, focusing on three TU features—simplification, explicitation, and normalization. Lexical bundles (LBs), recurrent multi-word sequences functioning as building blocks of discourse, are the linguistic unit for analysis. The study aims to (1) compare LB usage patterns in English subtitles translated from Thai and non-translated English captions, (2) examine the influence of Thai source texts and subtitling strategies on subtitle translation, and (3) investigate the relationship between idiosyncratic LB patterns, subtitling strategies, and TUs. Three corpora were compiled: the Corpus of English Subtitles Translated from Thai (CEST), the Corpus of English Captions (CEC), and a Parallel Corpus of English Subtitles Translated from Thai (PCEST). The analysis compares the structural and functional patterns of four-word LBs in subtitles and captions and examines the relationships among LB patterns, subtitling strategies, and TUs. Chi-square tests, Standardized Pearson Residuals, and Cohen’s Kappa were employed for statistical analysis. The findings reveal that although subtitles and captions share conversational LBs, subtitles exhibit higher LB density, more recurrent phraseological patterns, and a stronger preference for clause-based, stance, and discourse-organizing LBs. The findings further demonstrate that LB patterns characteristic of CEST are systematically shaped by Thai source-language features, audiovisual constraints, and subtitling strategies, through which simplification, normalization, and explicitation are realized. These findings demonstrate the value of LBs as an analytical unit for TU realization, extend TU research to audiovisual translation, and provide empirical evidence from the typologically distant Thai-English language pair.