Metaphor in short films: The challenges of subtitling for international film festivals

This paper draws from the experience of supervising the subtitling of short films for several international film festivals carried out by MA students in Specialised Translation between 2021 and 2022. Starting from some considerations on the effectiveness of using short films in the didactics of translation, it will establish a parallel between the operations of synthesis activated in metaphor to resolve complex conflictual meanings creatively and those involved in short films. The unifying function played by metaphorical structures will be investigated in a selection of case studies, underlining the importance of preserving cultural, cognitive, and textual cohesion in the translation. Considering the inevitable metonymic-metaphoric continuum that characterises audiovisual texts and the need to avoid intersemiotic tension between channels in the subtitling process, the discussion will revolve around examples taken from different subgenres, from documentary to poetry films, aimed to illustrate a spectrum of challenges posed by the translation of metaphors and the strategies used to resolve them while respecting the viewer’s space for interpretation and, more generally, the delicate ‘ecosystem’ of the short film.