Ideological Analysis Of The Movie

Ideology and translation/subtitling

Lefevere (1992: 15), says that during the production of a translated audiovisual material, patronage is the means to control the translation process. This patronage can be employed by persons, religious groups, a political party, publishers, or the media.

Most translators and subtitlers “have absorbed ideological norms and have acted upon them without much consciousness.” As Nord (2003: 111) has put it, “almost any decision in translation is consciously or unconsciously guided by ideological criteria.” Thus, in order to be socially accepted, most translators adapt the ideological features to meet the conventional norms in the target culture.

During the translation process, texts can be modified as stated

However, I noticed that the length of the majority of the top line subtitles was longer than the second line.

With regards to the translation level, several issues involved in the subtitling of the movie have been noticed.

One of the issues that I felt is particularly important or problematic in the translation of the film, is the translation of slang, and terms related to sex. Translating slang is problematic in more than one way. There is not always an equivalent slang expression in the target language. Censorship can also be imposed on slang expressions either by the translator, or imposed by an outside body.

The movie is full of swear words such as “Jerk”, “Asshole” and expressions like “go screw yourself” or “fuck you”. If translated literally into Arabic, it might cause great problems since the Arabic viewer is not accustomed to reading such kind of words on screen. Instead the translators used more sanitized words that would render the meaning without offending the viewers.

For instance in one of the scenes, Connor Mead asks his assistant to tell the client to” Go Screw Himself”. This has been translated in Arabic to “قولي له أن يذهب الى الجحيم”. “Tell him to go to hell”. The word Jerk has been translated to سافل i.e.

When it comes to technical limitations, as Luyken and his colleagues have mentioned, “its tasks are particularly restrained by time and space which are imposed by the nature of television and film production” (1991, pp.42); Translation process from oral into written text undoubtedly creates some difficulties, such as the goal of achieving maximum legibility or avoiding crowding translated subtitles out of the screen. It is quite obvious that the choice of translators is governed by ideologies, which is in turn constrained by authoritative bodies as publishers, subtitling agencies, censorial