The americanization of film subtitles : a sociocultural linguistic perspective to subtitling translation in the Arab world

Other Title(s)

أمركة ترجمة الأفلام : دراسة لغوية اجتماعية لترجمة الأفلام في العالم العربي

Joint Authors

Jumah, Muayyad Jumah
Ghaib, Rafid Abd al-Amir

Source

Al-Ustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences

Issue

Vol. 1, Issue 218 (30 Sep. 2016), pp.87-118, 32 p.

Publisher

University of Baghdad College of Education for Human Science / Ibn Rushd

Publication Date

2016-09-30

Country of Publication

Iraq

No. of Pages

32

Main Subjects

Languages & Comparative Literature
Arabic language and Literature

Topics

Abstract EN

The amount and diversity of mass media that our age witnesses have created a great deal of challenge to the process of translation all over the globe.

As an autonomous discipline of translation, the audio visual translation (AVT) has been flourishing due to the thousands satellite channels which are in a continuous pursuit of new subtitled programs.

Subtitling translation, accordingly, has exceeded its previous limited scope of films to include various types of reality TV shows, sport, documentaries, fashion programs etc.

Consequently, the need for professional expert subtitlers has become one of the hallmarks of our modern age of globalization.

One inevitable technique used by translators is to draw the author‟s modes of thinking towards that of the reader as close as possible without paying much attention to the various aspects of meaning associated.

This domestication technique has been criticized by Venuti (1995) for its denial of the visible role of the translator in his/her translated text.

As a substitute, a translator might foreignize the reader‟s modes of thinking and introduce him to that of the author.

In parallel, a film subtitler is doomed to choose one of these preferences either to satisfy the target language audiences linguistically and culturally, or to impose on them the source language foreign structures and modes of thinking.

The translator‟s preference between these two techniques is not as clear cut as Venuti suggests.

Factors such as the language distance between the SL and the TL, the translated text‟s subject matter, the language dominancy, and the translator‟s level of acquaintance with the various cultural facets of both the TL and the SL should also be taken into consideration in such preference.

This paper is an attempt to investigate the subtitling translation of the American films in the Arab world in terms of Venuti's dichotomy of domestication and foreignization.

It is based on a case study which examined the Arabic subtitle of two American films; “The Aviator” and “The Departed”, and the English subtitle of the Egyptian Arabic film “Hassan wa Murkis”.

American Psychological Association (APA)

Jumah, Muayyad Jumah& Ghaib, Rafid Abd al-Amir. 2016. The americanization of film subtitles : a sociocultural linguistic perspective to subtitling translation in the Arab world. Al-Ustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences،Vol. 1, no. 218, pp.87-118.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-709054

Modern Language Association (MLA)

Jumah, Muayyad Jumah& Ghaib, Rafid Abd al-Amir. The americanization of film subtitles : a sociocultural linguistic perspective to subtitling translation in the Arab world. Al-Ustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences Vol. 1, no. 218 (2016), pp.87-118.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-709054

American Medical Association (AMA)

Jumah, Muayyad Jumah& Ghaib, Rafid Abd al-Amir. The americanization of film subtitles : a sociocultural linguistic perspective to subtitling translation in the Arab world. Al-Ustath Journal for Human and Social Sciences. 2016. Vol. 1, no. 218, pp.87-118.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-709054

Data Type

Journal Articles

Language

English

Notes

Includes bibliographical references : p. 113-117

Record ID

BIM-709054