Translating culture-bound expressions in cartoon movies from English into Arabic
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Date
2024-11-07
Authors
امينة النجار
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Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
Audio-visual translation (AVT) is an important field of translation studies that is widely researched by scholars and researchers. This rising interest in AVT emanates from the high demand for good quality transference of meaning in contemporary film industries. Translational practices, however, may become subject to incessant gaps in the rendition of cultural material across languages. In her research on common cultural and linguistic mistakes in audio-visual translation, Abu Yaqoub (2016) contends that cultural and ideological dissimilarities between Arab and foreign cultures normally cause mistranslations and failures. and while subtitlers tend to use literal translation, dubbers normally tend to employ some strategies to overcome these challenges, such as modification, omission, addition, and sometimes compensation in translating movies, being more successful in dealing with the cultural and ideological components and direct them to suit the demands of the audience.
This study investigates the translation of culture-bound expressions in four cartoon movies from English into Arabic. It also pays special attention to dubbing as an essential type of AVT in rendering the cultural content of these movies. It examines the problematic aspects that translators face, including religious references, proper names, and idioms, and the strategies they adopt in dealing with cartoon movies. The data collected for the sake of this study are taken from the American animated movies Thumbelina, Toy Story, The Lion King, and Cinderella, and their translated versions in Arabic. A qualitative descriptive analysis is used to examine the corpus of the study. Following a comparison between the STs and TTs, the thesis examines the data using the translation strategies suggested by Newmark’s (1988) translation procedures model for culture-specific items.
Dubbers use foreignization in cases that do not affect the context meaning as a whole. For example, proper names may be translated using the transference strategy, although they may seem somewhat unfamiliar to Arab child readers. However, dubbers use domestication as the main strategy in dealing with cartoons, it is the best choice as it is target-oriented by which a translator tries to bridge cultural gaps by changing the text using strategies of cultural equivalent, functional equivalent, and paraphrasing.