Dubbing Religious References from English into Arabic: A Case Study of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules

Abstract

Dubbing religious references between two incongruent cultures may be considered one of the most complicated tasks due to the use of complex and specialized religion-specific concepts. This especially so when dealing with English and Arabic because the two religions of Christianity and Islam, being divine religions, may converge and diverge on several concepts, whether partially or completely. The present study examines dubbing religious references in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules animated movies into Arabic (Egyptian Vernacular) both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the quantitative part, the religious terms are classified based on the dubbing strategies suggested in this paper, including omission (21%), TT substitution (19%), generalization (15%), ST substitution (14%), topic shifting (14%), literal translation (11%), and paraphrase (6%). A sample of the overall adaptation of songs is also included. For its turn, the qualitative part looks critically into the strategies used in dubbing religious references. The findings show that the dubbers have opted for using a variety of translation strategies in order to avoid blasphemous expressions in the target Muslim culture. It seems that the avoidance of blasphemy emanating from Greek and Christian cultures in the two works has been a top priority for the dubbers. These findings are expected to be of great help to students and practitioners who engage in religious translation.