This doctoral research aims to investigate the most prevalent translation techniques adopted by Thai dubbing translators when transferring English-language idioms found in animated films into a lesser-known language such as Thai. To achieve this purpose, the methodological approach combines a quantitative phase, which has the benefit of revealing certain tendencies, with a qualitative phase that investigates the data in greater depth.

Wordplay instances can be grouped into two main categories according to their presentation nature: media-based and rhetoric-based. In the case of the media-based category, the types of wordplay instances uncovered in the analysis are audio-verbal, audio-visual-verbal and visual-verbal, while, based in the rhetoric-based category, they are homonymy, homophony, paraphony, hahaphony and allusion types. In an attempt to render ST puns into the TT, the following seven dubbing techniques have been activated by Thai translators: loan, literal translation, explicitation, substitution, recreation, combination and non-translation. Close examination of the data reveals that, despite the translators’ best effort to transfer the semantic ambiguity and humorous effect embedded in the English wordplay into the Thai dialogue, PUN>NON-PUN is the translation outcome with the highest occurrence. This results in the inevitable loss of semantic ambiguity and humour in the TT wordplay, as well as other pedagogical objectives intended by the film’s producers such as a language learning facilitator for young viewers.