The emblematic connotations and ideological values of images affect the way iconographic and visual codes are interpreted in dubbing. Religion, culture, and politics are all primary variables that communicate evaluative views of the world, but also impose pressure on the translator when they stand in conflict with his or her attitudinal positioning and ethical judgement. Thus, this article aims to examine how the interplay between iconographic and linguistic codes of the visual sign in the musical animation This Land is Mine impacts translational decision-making in dubbing into Arabic. Simultaneously, the aim of this article is to evaluate how religious, cultural, and ideological dissonances between source text and target audience result in acts of manipulation and negotiation of meaning in the target text that explicitly channels the voice of the translator. We employ a dual theoretical approach combining narrative theory and appraisal theory in order to evaluate patterns of manipulation within a scaled system to provide graded analysis that exposes the ideological stance and bias of the source text’s producer/animator in representing reality via visual narrative.

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The aim of this study is to investigate the sociolinguistic functions of code-switching and its relation to the meaning-making process by using the animated series Kim Possible as a case study. Design/methodology/approach: This study employs Muysken’s taxonomy to draw on code-switching patterns in lexico-grammar in relation to human behavior. The study also uses the functional approaches of Muysken and Appel and Gumperz as binary investigatory frameworks to locate interlingual and intralingual code-switching particularities and to elaborate on code-switching functions. Data and analysis: The analysis encompasses 48 episodes. Firstly, we extracted and transcribed code-switching occurrences in light of Muysken’s typology episode-by-episode and categorized them according to their code-switching type (interlingual or intralingual). Secondly, we quantified the occurrences according to their syntactic form to make more systematic claims about code-switching patterns. Next, we triangulated the patterns by examining the context of utterances and extralinguistic factors in the original series vis-à-vis the dubbed version to draw upon information beyond the structure or grammar. Findings/conclusions: The Arabic dubbed version was able to communicate the characters’ cosmopolitan diversity, which correlates with the series’ sense of linguistic modernity and humor. At the same time, the Arabic version was able to portray the extralinguistic reality of Lebanon and its multi-linguistic tapestry. Originality: This research is original because it focuses on Lebanese-Arabic, a dialect seldom discussed in the context of translation. The research also examines language variations in the context of dubbed discourse, where code-switching is integrally pertinent to visual-signs and the cultural background of characters. Significance/implications: The study recognizes the intricacy of code-switching as a reflective phenomenon of social reality and power dynamics; therefore, it contributes in the fields of translation and sociolinguistics.

This research provides a comparative study between Hilary Kilpatrick's English translation and Tawfiq Saleh's film adaptation ʾ Al-Makhduʿun ( The Duped) of Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun. Drawing on Narrative and Appraisal theories, this research investigates the ideological disparity between Kilpatrick and Saleh's approaches to Kanafani's text by examining their respective attitudinal stance and patterns of narrative (re)framing in relation to three dimensions: politics, religion, and culture. The research, thus, accentuates the ways in which the translator's identity, with its nexus of associated values, can reshape and reconfigure both narratives and reality by producing hegemonic or resistant translations. In doing so, the study, from a postcolonial perspective, aims to redirect the attention toward the ‘vertical’ power dynamics in and of translation, in addition to exposing the varying, often subtle, levels of negotiation, manipulation and intervention such politically loaded narratives, especially contested narratives, experience in translation. In fact, combining literary translation with adaptation reveals how narratives of the same objet d'art are creatively interpreted and re-negotiated differently when the translation medium involves visuals.