Gottlieb’s subtitling strategies in the Indonesian subtitle of Kpop Demon Hunters movie

The study aims to analyze the subtitling strategies in the movie KPop Demon Hunters, which portrays various elements of Korean culture and Korean Wave or Hallyu terminology. There are two main problems to be solved in this study, namely: (1) what types of subtitling strategies are used in translating the dialogues in the movie KPop Demon Hunters from English into Indonesian, and (2) what subtitling strategy used in translating popular terms related to the Korean and Korean Wave or Hallyu terminology in the movie. This study used a qualitative approach in relation to the use of clear and systematic descriptions of the subtitling phenomena being studied. A descriptive study in textual analysis was applied in this study to analyze the English and Indonesian subtitles of KPop Demon Hunters movie. The data were collected by first transcribing the Indonesian subtitle in the platform and comparing the Source Text (ST) from the downloaded script and the Target Text (TT) from Netflix subtitles. The transcription was then analyzed by identifying the types of subtitling strategies used according to Gottlieb’s theory (1992), which includes ten strategies: expansion, paraphrase, transfer, imitation, transcription, condensation, decimation, deletion, dislocation, and resignation. This study reveals that eight of the ten subtitling strategies proposed by Gottlieb were found in the movie KPop Demon Hunters. The most frequently used strategies are transfer and condensation, while the least frequently used strategy is resignation. Meanwhile, dislocation and transcription were not found in the data. The frequent use of the transfer strategy indicates that the translator tends to translate the subtitles literally while maintaining the original meaning of the dialogue. The use of transfer and imitation strategies appears mainly in the translation of Korean Wave or Hallyu terminology, such as hoobae, maknae, visual, and ramyeon, showing the translator’s effort to preserve cultural authenticity. Overall, the findings indicate that the subtitler not only aims for linguistic accuracy but also attempts to maintain cultural elements significant to K-pop and Korean identity.