Arabic Audio-Visual Translation Censorship: A Corpus Study of Subtitles of Three Films

Abstract

Audio-visual translation is one of the most dynamic types of translation. As this form of translation deals with culture as well as language media is often altered to remove sensitive elements. This is common in the Arab world where censor boards filter media before its rerelease. The strategies employed in censorship have been influenced by advancements in technology and mass media narratives. This paper therefore examines the subtitling strategies employed in film censorship by examining three American films, namely, The Hangover, Bridesmaids, and What Women Want. The research adopts Pederson’s taxonomy (2017) as a theoretical framework in addition to the three strategies proposed in this study ‘tone down,’ ‘upgrading,’ and ‘normalizing’. The results indicated that censorship is common in the Arab world in the forms of omission and euphemism. Moreover, it was found that subtitles employ high register language when rendering the low register language of the source text despite the availability of low register language choices. The study recommends that dialectical and non-standard Arabic be used for the rendering of sensitive elements. Future studies may build on these findings to improve the understanding of censorship trends and unconventional movements.