ABSTRACT
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11953.].
ABSTRACT
The present article explores one of the most unexpected and unpredictable changes of taboo language by language users and its translation into English as can be illustrated in the analysis of a Lebanese movie entitled West Beirut. The article first argues that taboo language is surely far more difficult than any other types of language to deal with in subtitling. Such a language is inelegant, but so confusing insofar as subtitlers are concerned, apparently due to the degree of social acceptability of the profanities by various cultures on the one hand, and to the technical restrictions related to the subtitling process on the other. The article shows that in an attempt to ensure mastery of the intricacies resulted from the use of obscene-loaded language and technical constraints associated to them, subtitlers use a considerable number of translation strategies. The article adopts a two-integrated approach: Toury's (1995) product-oriented Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) and 'coupled pairs' to analyze the original dialogue and its English equivalent. The findings reveal that the subtitlers have resorted to six translation strategies while dealing with excessive taboo language density, namely cultural substitution (adaptation), literal translation, euphemism, omission, reformulation and change in the semantic field. It might then be concluded that utilizing some of these strategies have resulted in distortions of the original dialogue, while others have managed to reach its intended audience. Finally, the article highlights that cultural considerations play a major role in determining the translation strategies and their frequency in communicating taboo language into other cultures.
ABSTRACT
The present paper is designed to shed some light on one of the main subfields of audiovisual translation, namely voice-over, and mainly attempts to capture the intricacies involved in English-Arabic translation of a BBC television documentary entitled NW Great. The sample of the study consists of 10 MA translation students at Al-Quds University, enrolled in Audiovisual Translation I for the academic year 2016/2017. The paper confirms what Orero (2004) is inclined to conclude, that besides voice-over's main defining features, namely faithfulness and synchrony, etc., student translators are commonly faced with several technical (e.g., synchrony in voice-over, observable in the same way as Orero (2004) argues, close-ups, etc.) and linguistic problems and potential semantic and stylistic loss. The study also has a pedagogical angle thought to be useful to trainers and trainees of the audiovisual translation mode of voice-over.
