Untranslatability and Compensation Strategies in Subtitle Translation for Dialect Micro-Dramas: A Japanese Subtitling Case Study of My Sweet Home

Abstract

Amid the global expansion of Chinese micro-dramas, the translation of dialect-based micro-dramas has emerged as a new and challenging field. Taking the Japanese subtitling of the Sichuan dialect micro-drama “My Sweet Home” as a case study, this paper investigates untranslatability and compensation strategies in subtitling dialect micro-dramas. The findings reveal that untranslatability primarily manifests at four levels: dialectal words, culture-specific items, address terms, and two-part allegorical sayings. To address these challenges, translators need to flexibly apply the four compensation strategies proposed by Hervey and Higgins—compensation in kind, compensation in place, compensation by merging, and compensation by splitting. The selection of compensation strategies is a context-driven dynamic process, with the multimodal coordination of visuals and tone (compensation in place) serving as an indispensable aid across all levels. When structural differences exist between Chinese and Japanese, translation practice shifts from lexical correspondence to systemic pragmatic reconstruction. This study offers strategic references for Japanese subtitling of dialect micro-dramas and validates the applicability of compensation theory in Chinese-Japanese translation.