Rendering Satire in Dubbing Vs. Subtitling: A Case Study of the Arabic Translation of the American Sitcom
[Thesis]
Hijazi, Dua'a Nafez
Yahiaoui, Rashid
Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar)
2019
88 p.
M.A.
Hamad Bin Khalifa University (Qatar)
2019
This study investigates translation strategies used to render satire in two different modalities of audiovisual translation, dubbing and subtitling, of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons from American English into Modern Standard Arabic (Subtitling) and Egyptian vernacular (Dubbing). In addition, it attempts to discover the contribution of language variety and translation modality in rendering satire. The study draws on Simpson's (2003) stylistic model of satirical humor for both understanding and analyzing satire. Furthermore, it utilizes the Mateo's taxonomy (1995) to highlight the strategies used in dubbing and subtitling satire in The Simpsons into Arabic. Applying these two models helps in examining the issues posed by the nature of satire and the shifts in the configuration of satire when rendered from English into Arabic and the efficiency of these shifts. The findings of the study show that the socio-cultural nature of satire creates a serious challenge for translators. Furthermore, it has proved that subtitling tends to use literal translation strategy to render satire. This strategy was sufficient in instances that share the same background of the source text and failed with sociocultural based ones. Conversely, it was observed that dubbing tends to utilize the equivalent effect strategy which proved to be sufficient when adapting the sociocultural element of satire. In addition, language variety and translation modality seemed to govern the efficiency of translation of satirical instances.