Problems in English to Arabic Subtitles Translation of Religious Terms—Bruce Almighty and Supernatural on MBC & Dubai One: A Case Study

Abstract

This paper attempts to shed light on some cultural and/or technical problems in the translation of religious terms from English into Arabic in the subtitles of movies, with particular reference to some Arab Gulf countries channels. Due to limitations of time and space, the researcher has taken two particular channels as representative, namely MBC Channel group and Dubai One. The data of the research have been collected from one film and one TV series as quite typical examples of works that may lead to serious problems in the subtitles translation with regard to religious terms. In both cases, the use of religious terms is not only obligatory but also focal. The researcher points the discrepancies in the choice of Arabic equivalents for the English religious terms in question as well as explores the possible reasons of and recommended solutions to such cultural problems in translation. The film, Bruce Almighty, is a light and comic treatment of the phenomenon of well-educated yet vain young men, doubting the wisdom of God Almighty. Jim Cary plays the role of the young man, while Morgan Freeman actually plays God! Hence, there is no easy way out of the necessity of tackling the problem of translating the religious terms involved. As for the TV series, Supernatural, the whole episode deals with God, angels, demons and Satan. It remains to be said that this paper does not claim to give decisive answers to the questions posed by the research, but only aspires to pave the way before further research on the topic and related issues.

Strategies of translating swear words into Arabic: a case study of a parallel corpus of Netflix English-Arabic movie subtitles

“…However, the meaning of the audiovisual product should be delivered with such technical constraints (Matkivska, 2014). Resorting to the strategy of omission seems to be relatively common, as it was discussed by different scholars (ElShiekh, 2016;Hosseinnia, 2014;Simanjuntak and Basari, 2016). Using this strategy is not haphazard and requires a profound knowledge of the connotative functions of the linguistic elements so that susbtitlers compensate for the loss that occurred due to the act of deletion.…”