The present paper looks closely at the link between language, translation and culture in view of two different approaches to translation studies. Completely excluding the cultural context from the theory and analysis of translation, scholars have for a long time considered translation to be solely a linguistic procedure, which involves a simple replacement of lexical and grammatical items between languages. The shift from this purely linguistic approach to translation studies, referred to as the cultural turn, can be seen in the inclusion of extra-linguistic factors in the process of translation. With the scope of translation studies being broadened to cover the cultural framework as well, translation is now viewed as the process of both linguistic and cultural adaptation. Since language forms an integral component of culture, linguistic items cannot be translated into target language without referring to the context of culture first. Even though cultures differ among themselves, they also have many points in common, which makes translation possible. Centering on the corpus of the English culture-bound items used in subtitles, this paper aims to prove that a cultural gap in Croatian can in practice always be bridged via corresponding translation strategy. Apart from the need to take into account all the factors determining the choice of the procedure, translator as a cultural mediator should also be bilingual and bicultural in order to successfully transfer source cultural references into target language.