Gender Representation in the Arabic Dubbing Disney Animation: A Feminist Perspective

Abstract

The study aims at understanding how the developments in gender representation are transferred linguistically into the Arabic dubbed versions of the films and recognizing the extent to which these translations may affect the discursive construction of gender in the dubbed films. In order to explore the changes in the representation of gender in the Arabic dubbed Disney films, the study focuses on answering the two main research questions: how is gender textually represented in the three selected Arabic dubbed films in comparison to their original animations? and how far is Disney's gender representation in the original films is discursively reflected in the Arabic dubbing? The study focuses on analysing three themes: gender roles, gender identity, and gender relations in the Arabic dubbing, produced by Masreya Media, of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Mulan (1998), and Frozen (2013). To answer the research questions, the study adopts the first two dimensions of Fairclough‘s (2013) Critical-Discourse-Analysis (CDA) three dimensional model, which perceives any communicative event consisting of three interconnected aspects: text, discursive practice, and social practice, as the methodological framework for the analysis. As for the first dimension, text, the study uses Van Leeuwen‘s (2008) socio-semantic Social Actors Inventory as a tool of analysis. For the second dimension, discursive practice, the study adopts Sunderland's (2004) four sets of gendered discourses. The findings involve differences in gender representation in some scenes in the dubbed versions of the three films, which have implications on the discursive representation of gender in the Arabic dubbing.