SUBTITLING STRATEGIES, ACCEPTABILITY, AND READABILITY OF F-WORDS IN PEAKY BLINDERS: THE IMMORTAL MAN

This study analyzes the translation of swear words in the Indonesian subtitles of the film
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026). The objectives of this research are to classify
the types of f-words based on their functions according to Andersson and Trudgill (1990),
to identify the applied subtitling strategies based on Gottlieb (1992), and to assess the
translation acceptability and readability based on Nababan et al. (2012). This research
employed a qualitative case study method. Data were gathered through content analysis
of the film’s subtitles and Focus Group Discussions (FGD) involving expert raters and
target readers. The findings revealed 84 f-word data, classified into four types: auxiliary
(54.76%), expletive (35.71%), abusive (8.33%), and humorous (1.19%). Furthermore,
eight subtitling strategies were applied across 115 instances: Deletion (47.83%),
Paraphrase (28.70%), Transfer (8.70%), Expansion (8.70%), Dislocation (2.61%),
Imitation (1.74%), Condensation (0.87%), and Decimation (0.87%). The translation
quality assessment showed that the acceptability of the translation barely passes the
threshold, while its readability achieved a mean score of 2.94 (Readable). The study
concludes that there is a trade-off between acceptability and readability; the dominant use
of the deletion strategy increased readability by producing shorter and simpler subtitles,
but it reduced acceptability by stripping the dialogue of its original emotional intensity,
gritty characterization, and interpersonal meaning.