Acknowledgements

I have been fascinated by metaphors in audiovisual settings ever since I was a young man and enjoyed them being acted out in the TV series Yes Minister, and realized just how much the subtitlers struggled to do them justice. I started researching metaphors in AVT for real some ten years ago, but my administrative duties as Director of the Institute for Interpreting and Translation Studies (TÖI) at Stockholm University made progress slow for many years. Once one of my dear colleagues had taken over that role — thank you Magnus Dahnberg — and I was given a grant by my university, it was possible to pursue this goal for real, however. I am thus very grateful to the Stockholm University Research Sabbatical scheme and former Vice-Chancellor Astrid Söderbergh-Widding for funding the term I needed to finish this project. This support, and a very kind invitation from Carol O’Sullivan, allowed me to go to the University of Bristol, and to rent a small stone cottage in the Cam Valley in the rolling hills of Somerset, which allowed me the peace and quiet needed for the project. I am even more grateful to my dear wife, Lisa Rondahl-Pedersen, who took care of everything at home while I was pursuing this goal. I would also like to thank former Dean Elisabeth Wåghäll-Nivre for further financial support, which made it possible for me to frequently travel between the cottage and Stockholm to be at least partly present for my family, including our disabled daughter.

A heart-felt thank you is also extended to friends and colleagues inside and outside TÖI at the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism at Stockholm University for reading and commenting on early chapter drafts of this monograph. Particularly, I’d like to mention David Minugh, Andrew Cooper, Erik Smitterberg, Milena Podolsak, Lova Meister, Yvonne Lindqvist, Raphael Sannholm, Elin Svahn, Elisabeth Bladh, Birgitta Englund Dimitrova, and all my friends and colleagues at the library seminar at TÖI. I would particularly like to thank Laura Babcock for her invaluable help with statistics testing. I am also grateful to Elena Di Giovanni and Patrick Zabalbeascoa for their valuable comments, which improved the quality of this monograph immensely.

Finally, I would like to thank all audiovisual translators; without their hard and creative labour, all my academic pursuits would have been totally impossible. In particular, I’d like to thank Anna Antonsson for her contributions to this monograph.