This article draws on three American movies to illustrate censorship in English-Arabic subtitling. The paper argues that in translating languages of little cultural affinity, censorship serves as a remedy that can narrow the potential cultural gap. However, the paper shows that the films have been exposed to excessive censorship in the Arabic subtitles, although not in the original film. Therefore, the subtitles, usually viewed as a verbal-visual channel, work to restrict the flow of communication, depriving the target audience of much information existing in the Source Language (SL) dialogue. The fact that the shots help us understand what is being said is not fully taken into consideration by the satellite channels. The study finally reveals that two major strategies are employed in the translation, namely the omission of obscene utterances in the SL and the rendition of the SL obscenity into a less offensive equivalent in the Target Language (TL).
In institutions across the world, translation training is accorded sacrosanct status in translation studies. Recent developments in translation and technology, combined with the increasingly prominent role of translation in the global marketplace, have given the discipline a renewed significance both academically and culturally. In Palestine, however, translator training has for many years subsisted on limited resources, despite the fact that translation, in most Palestinian universities English departments, has been a requisite course in English language and literature degrees at undergraduate level for the past four decades. Drawing on first-hand experience from teaching undergraduate translation courses at Al-Quds University and An-Najah National University, what this article attempts to investigate, then, is the status of translation teaching at the undergraduate level at English departments in Palestinian universities. To that effect, the paper uses a selective body of authentic translation examples and outlines some important issues which are indispensable to undergraduate translation teaching. The study offers advice and guidelines to university professors and instructors who do not have degrees and/or training in translation and find themselves obliged to teach undergraduate translation courses at their respective English departments.
This paper examines the translatability of Arabic interjections into English subtitling, illustrated with a subtitled Egyptian film, State Security subtitled by Arab Radio and Television (ART). Theoretical framework regarding both Audiovisual Translation (AVT) and interjections is first discussed. The significance of interjections is approached from the perspective of technical and translation paradigms. The study shows that although technical issues limit the subtitler’s choices, they have very little to do with translating interjections because they are typically short words. With regard to translation, the study shows that the subtitler may opt for three major translation strategies: 1) an avoidance of source language (SL) interjection whereby a SL interjectional utterance is translated into a target language (TL) interjection-free utterance; 2) a retention of SL interjection in which SL interjection is rendered into a TL interjection; and 3) an addition of interjection whereby SL interjection-free utterance is translated into a TL interjection.Le présent article examine la traductibilité des interjections arabes dans un sous-titrage anglais. La recherche est illustrée par un film égyptien, intitulé State Security (La sécurité d’État), qui est sous-titré par le réseau de radio et de télévision arabe (Arab Radio and Television Network; ART). Le cadre théorique relatif à la traduction audiovisuelle (TAV) et aux interjections est tout d’abord présenté. L’importance des interjections est abordée du point de vue des paradigmes techniques et traductionnels. L’étude montre que, bien que les questions techniques limitent le choix des sous-titreurs, elles ont peu d’influence sur la traduction des interjections, car celles-ci sont généralement des mots courts. En ce qui concerne la traduction, l’étude montre que le sous-titreur peut opter pour trois grandes stratégies: 1) ne pas prendre en compte l’interjection dans la langue source (LS) et utiliser une expression sans interjection dans la langue cible (LC); 2) prendre en considération l’interjection dans la LS et la traduire dans la LC; 3) ajouter une interjection dans la LC alors qu’elle est absente dans la LS
Translator training has made a significant contribution to translation in the job market worldwide. The issue of curriculum development has always been part of such training which can pave the way for employability. This issue should then be given due attention in view of recent developments in the field of translation and technology, and the considerably larger and more robust job market. This article aims to explore the status of professionally-oriented translation, curriculum-wise in Palestine as illustrated in two Palestinian universities offering MA in translation in the hope of giving some advice to developers of academic postgraduate translation programmes. First, the article closely examines the course description of the courses (core or elective) in the two universities. The article then shows that although most of the courses offered help graduates manage to get jobs or moonlight, the curricula seem to fail to match the employability in the growing market place, as some courses at these universities, with a varying degree, are unrelated to the local job market. The article concludes that (1) the issue of curriculum permanent planning and design in the light of the job market becomes vital in translation, or training and education; (2) developing a curriculum should be responsive to local, regional and international translation industry demands, and thus it might contribute to sustainable development in the Palestine translation industry; and (3) information technology-based courses should be given more attention and developed so as to keep abreast of today's rapidly technological developments, since these courses might qualify graduates to cross various geographical borders to compete globally with peer translators.
In subtitling, communication is seen as more than a matter of linguistic representation on screen. To relay the perceived meaning to the Target Language (TL) audience, other polysemiotic channels should then be taken into full consideration. This paper analyses a corpus of three scenes taken from a thriller entitled Crash (2004), broadcast on MBC4 satellite channel in 2010. The paper reveals that whilst the Source Language (SL) dialogue is highly confrontational and inflammatory, the Arabic subtitles ameliorate the dialogue, thus giving rise to a head-on clash with other polysemiotic elements of the moving picture. The paper also shows that the semiotic modalities should be explicitly encoded in the subtitles on screen. When these modalities are universal, translation avoidance strategy is an outlet. This strategy is employed to meet the expectations of the target audience which belongs to Arab culture of little affinity with that of English. The paper finally reveals that although foreignising strategy is advocated in subtitling, domesticating strategy is still a valid choice for the subtitler.
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