This research examines the suprasegmental adaptation of Turkish television series in Urdu dubbing, focusing on measurable differences in pitch, intonation, and rhythm, and their implications for technical synchrony and cultural-ideological mediation. By employing a mixed-methods design, 18 scenes from six Turkish dramas and their Urdu-dubbed counterparts were analyzed. Praat software had been employed to quantify acoustic features (intensity, pitch, syllable duration) and qualitative integrated frameworks (Audiovisual Translation Theory, Relevance Theory, Prosodic Phonology). Results revealed systematic divergences: Urdu dubs compressed intensity ranges (46.73–100 dB vs. Turkish 1.74–100 dB), elevated pitch peaks (e.g., 172–800 Hz), and adopted stress-timed hybridity to prioritize lip-sync accuracy and cultural resonance. These shifts reflected a strategic negotiation between technical constraints (e.g., isochrony) and ideological imperatives, amplifying Islamic themes for Pakistani audiences while disrupting Turkish’s syllable-timed prosody. The study highlighted Urdu dubbing’s role as a cultural filter, balancing transnational storytelling with local conservatism. The analysis acknowledged reliance on manual acoustic data extraction, which may introduce human error, and an exclusive focus on standardized Urdu dubbing practices, neglecting regional dialectical influences Future research should leverage machine-learning algorithms to automate prosodic alignment in Urdu dubbing workflows. This research advances audiovisual translation scholarship by modeling a tripartite framework for non-European language pairs, emphasizing the interdependence of technical precision, cognitive pragmatics, and cultural authenticity in media localization.
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