Translating Similes into Swedish and Finnish in the Subtitles of How I Met Your Mother

Sammanfattning: Similes are present in all kinds of verbal communication as they can exemplify difficult concepts by comparing them to more familiar ones, create unique imagery by combining two unexpected topics or help a person express their thoughts more accurately. However, they can be problematic to translate, especially in subtitles, where both time and space are limited. This study reveals what kinds of strategies Swedish and Finnish translators use when they translate various types of similes in the subtitles of the American sitcom How I Met your Mother and compares the preferences between the two target languages. The results show the most frequent approach is to translate word-for-word, while a wide range of alternative translations also exists in spite of the differences between the two target texts.