A study of strategies used in translating Thai boys' love series titles from Thai to English

The Thai entertainment industry has grown rapidly due to globalization contributing to the expansion of the Thai boy love series (Thai BL series) in the international markets. The translation, including the titles, has played an important role in the Thai BL series. The purpose of the study was (1) to explore the strategies used to translate the Thai BL series titles; moreover, (2) the frequency and percentage were calculated to determine the most frequently used strategy in this study. The translation approach from Thongwan’s study (2012) was based on the Skopos theory. This study was a mixed method research. The titles of the 125 Thai BL series released between 2022-2023 listed on the blwatcher.com website were collected to investigate the translation strategies. Full length and short movies were excluded. The result indicated that there were five groups of strategies: (1) original titles composed in English, (2) transliteration, (3) literal translation, (4) renaming, and (5) mixed strategies. Moreover, 13 strategies were found in this investigation. The most frequently used strategy was the partial translation with the addition of English. More than a quarter of the series used this strategy (27.2%) whereas, transferring English from original titles with the addition of English, partial transliteration without the addition of English, and partial transliteration and partial translation without the addition of English were the least frequently used strategies. Those strategies were applied in only one series (0.8%).