Cultural Issues In Audiovisual Translation

Audiovisual Translation (AVT) is undoubtedly increasing in the field of Translation Studies. Subtitling, as all other types of AVT, has always been influenced by cultural factors, which in turn, have influenced their target readers. This may raise problems, or challenging issues in translating cultural references from oral dialogue into written subtitles. The aim of this study is to investigate the problems faced in the Arabic subtitling of cultural referents in the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past into Arabic. In this study we address only subtitling which, in the words of Gottlieb (2004,pp. 219-220) is defined as:

Diasemiotic translation in polysemiotic media (including films, tv, video and DVD) in the form of one or more lines of written text

For this reason the translator has to produce a target text that is simple, intelligible and readable at high speed. Moreover, movie audiences are often from different backgrounds and can be educated, literate or even partially illiterate. They can also be of various age groups, or from different social classes. Thus, the translator has to adapt his target text so that it can be understood by a wide

From a historical point of view, the first subtitled movie in the Arab world, Children of the Rich, was produced in Egypt in 1932. Four years later, “American talkies started to arrive in Egypt in the early 1930s” Gamal (2008: 2). As stated by Gamal, the establishment of contemporary Egyptian subtitling is undeniably accredited to the hard work of Anis Ebaid. AVT was dominated by the Anis Ebaid Company which for almost four decades had a great influence on the Arab and Egyptian work in particular. The strict regulations “on dealing with violence, foul language, blasphemy and sex” were then established. Censorship played a major role in this domain. From the beginning, the movie censor would decide which movies are to be subtitled and released into the local market. Thus, emerging subtitling companies had to have a close relationship with the censorship office, and since then, the language of subtitling emerged as a genre (Gamal, 2008: 3). Because of the huge number of movies imported from the United States, the censorship body focused on three main issues: violence, language, and sex. Thus, “swear words had to be sanitized, sexual references deleted and blasphemous references expunged”