Fansubbers’ Subtitling Strategies of Swear Words from English into Arabic in the Bad Boys Movies

Abstract

Abstract This research investigates the strategies used by fansubbers to translate English culture-bound expressions into Arabic. It further investigates the functions of swear words and how the fansubber regenerated their functional connotations. The corpus of the study consists of English subtitles and Arabic fansubs of the Bad Boys movies. The researchers analyzed the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. The frameworks adopted in this research are the strategies proposed by Diaz-Cintas and Remael and the classification model of swear words presented by Ljung. The findings showed that the fansubber rendered the culture-bound expressions using seven strategies, the most dominant of which is omission at almost 37%. Other strategies varied in their percentage with: transposition, second-most utilized at 29%, followed by explicitation (25%), calques (8%), loanwords (0.2%), lexical creation (0.5%), and compensation (0.13%). The results showed that these strategies were sometimes wrongly used due to the lack of guidelines for fansubs. On the other hand, the dominant function of swearing used in the movie is the standalone one. Noticeably, the connotation of functional elements was often neglected by the fansubber. Thus, the fansubs were sometimes lacking in accuracy. Finally, the current research provides some implications and recommendations for translators when handling culture-bound expressions.