Translation of culture-specific fixed expressions and swear words in some Arabic-into-English subtitled films

Abstract EN

This paper presents the concept of audiovisual translation (AVT) as it has only recently become an object of interest within the discipline of translation studies.

the rise of new technologies has greatly shifted attention and focus from stereotypes of translation to technological and digital aspects of translation.

this gives rise to international and intercultural communication and therefore, a dire need arises to investigate audiovisual translation that is considerably linked to socio and intercultural differences and norms.

this paper intends to analyze subtitling as the most familiar type of AVT through taking into account important factors including socio-linguistic elements, cultural contexts, and stylistic considerations.

the paper discusses film subtitling with the aim of exploring translator's conformity to the socio and cultural considerations when conveying the source language (SL) messages to the target language (TL).

it mainly investigates the difficulties involved in subtitling language-specific idioms and swear words.

the paper reveals that AVT should be based on cross-cultural awareness and a full comprehension of the cultural aspects of both the source and target languages.

the paper also concludes that handling the translation of subtitles has specific characteristics and poses challenges that entail special attention to its transfer and the translation strategies applied in this regard.