“The cuisine is not an old, tired marriage. It is a passionate affair of the heart”: Translation of Gastronomical References in the Film “The Hundred-Foot Journey”

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the translation strategies used for culture-specific items related to gastronomy in the Lithuanian subtitles of the American comedy-drama film “The Hundred-Foot Journey” (2014), directed by Lasse Hallström. The film explores the convergence of diverse cultural perspectives through its culinary practices. Drawing on a theoretical framework that includes translation strategies by Jorge Díaz Cintas and Aline Remael (2021), this study identifies seven distinct translation strategies employed by the Lithuanian translator, including loan translation, literal translation, explication, substitution, calque, transposition, and omission, to render the distinguished 56 culture-specific items from the source language into the target language. The study offers a systematic approach to the analysis of how translators handle culture-specific items within audiovisual media, accounting for spatio-temporal subtitling limitations and parameters that may impact the decision-making process of the translator.