Creating and Experimenting a New Parallel Corpus of English-Arabic Subtitles of Culinary Shows: A Useful Guide for Translating Food Across Cultures

Abstract

This study presents and experiments a new English-Arabic corpus of food shows subtitles. It describes the data selection and extraction methods and suggests potential applications for the compiled corpus. It follows a corpus-driven approach to examine the strategies used to subtitle food-related terminology. The current study uses a new 259,956-word English-Arabic parallel corpus of some food shows, namely Nadiya Bakes, Nadiya Time to Eat, Somebody Feed Phil 1, and Somebody Feed Phil 2. The findings showed that Western culinary traditions, characterized by their accessibility and familiarity, exhibit a more seamless integration into the culinary vocabulary of Arabic. At the same time, the assimilation of Eastern gastronomies, renowned for their regional nuances and intricate flavors, appears to be comparatively less direct. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Arabic, to a lesser degree, incorporates loanwords from a range of Eastern culinary traditions. The current piece of research provides some implications and recommendations for translators when handling culture-bound expressions, specifically food expressions. The practitioners are compelled to navigate a delicate equilibrium between applying loan translations and identifying fitting Arabic counterparts while considering the imperative factors of cultural sensitivity, intricate linguistic nuances, and contextual appropriateness.