Dirāsāt. Al-'ulūm al-insāniyyaẗ wa-al-iǧtimā'iyyaẗ/Dirāsāt. Al-ʻulūm al-insāniyyaẗ wa-al-iǧtimāʻiyyaẗ, Dec 30, 2023
Objectives: This study aims to examine the effect of variations in word derivations in the Holy Q... more Objectives: This study aims to examine the effect of variations in word derivations in the Holy Quran on conveying their communicative impact when translated into English. Specifically, the study seeks to identify which of the selected translations have preserved the intended pragmatic effect triggered by word derivation variations in each Ayah when translated into English. To achieve this objective, the study compiles a corpus consisting of Ayahs containing randomly selected morphological derivation variations from the Holy Quran and their translations in English by ), Pickthall (1930, . The content analysis method was employed to identify instances of word derivation variations in the corpus, and Nida's (1964) principle of equivalent effect was adopted to examine the loss of the communicative impact of these words in each translation. The findings of the study indicate that almost all the selected translations failed to preserve the intended pragmatic effect triggered by the variation in word derivations in the Holy Quran when conveyed to English recipients. The reasons behind this failure might be attributed to the translators' inability to grasp the intended pragmatic implications resulting from morphological variations of words.
The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlo... more The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlocutors in the "Opposite Direction" presented by Al-Jazeera satellite channel. In the heat of discussion, interlocutors resort to certain aggressive strategies to attack each other's face in an attempt to get the floor and instigate the other interviewee to react in a more offensive manner. This situation is usually triggered and intensified by the interviewer who is supposed to be neutral and works into managing the interview. The more offensive the debate is, the more interested the viewers will be. The study collates a corpus consisting of one translated episode into English [25] of the 'Opposite Direction' covering the topic of 'The Clash of Civilization and the Class of Religions' in which the interviewer Faisal Qasim (FQ), a famous journalist on Al-Jazeera Channel invites Wafa Sultan (WS), a writer and a researcher in Los Angles and Ibrahim Al-Khou...
The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlo... more The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlocutors in the "Opposite Direction" presented by Al-Jazeera satellite channel. In the heat of discussion, interlocutors resort to certain aggressive strategies to attack each other's face in an attempt to get the floor and instigate the other interviewee to react in a more offensive manner. This situation is usually triggered and intensified by the interviewer who is supposed to be neutral and works into managing the interview. The more offensive the debate is, the more interested the viewers will be. The study collates a corpus consisting of one translated episode into English [25] of the ‘Opposite Direction’ covering the topic of ‘The Clash of Civilization and the Class of Religions’ in which the interviewer Faisal Qasim (FQ), a famous journalist on Al-Jazeera Channel invites Wafa Sultan (WS), a writer and a researcher in Los Angles and Ibrahim Al-Khouli (IK), a lecturer a...
This study seeks to investigate the translation orientation of amateur subtitlers when rendering ... more This study seeks to investigate the translation orientation of amateur subtitlers when rendering swearwords in American crime drama movies into Arabic. It focuses on a semantico-pragmatic analysis of such words in the selected movies and their subtitles in Arabic. This study also aims to identify the adopted translation strategies with emphasis on the effect of deletion on the conveyance of the intended meaning of swearwords to the target recipients and the causes of deletion. The study addresses four research questions: 1. To what extent have the semantic fields of swearwords in the movie dialogues been retained in the Arabic subtitles and what causes the resulting shifts? 2. To what extent have the pragmatic functions of swearwords in these movies been preserved in the Arabic subtitles? 3. What are the translation strategies adopted by amateur subtitlers to transfer swearwords in these movies into Arabic? 4. How does the deletion of swearwords in the Arabic subtitles affect the co...
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2019
Swearwords are intentionally employed in movies to express certain pragmatic functions including ... more Swearwords are intentionally employed in movies to express certain pragmatic functions including portraying characters' inner feelings, their social and educational background and the relationship between the characters. Such functions need to be preserved in the interlingual/intercultural subtitling so that the communicative effects of swearwords are duly transferred to the target audience. However, achieving this objective requires a thorough contextual analysis of the relationship between the characters, the intended illocutionary force of the speech acts expressed by the swearwords and the reaction of the addressee to their implied communicative force. A lack of such an analysis may lead to a change in the intended pragmatic functions of swearwords during the subtitling process. In this light, this study sought to investigate the pragmatic functions of swearwords in selected American crime drama movies and their Arabic subtitles, identifying whether the same pragmatic functions of such words have been preserved in the subtitles. The study also attempted to identify the causes and consequences of the resulting (in)congruity between the expressed functions of the swearwords in the movies compared with those expressed by their subtitles in Arabic. To address these objectives, a corpus comprising the scripts of two American crime drama movies exhibiting high occurrences of swearwords and
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2022
This study aims at investigating the extent to which the aesthetic effect (AE) in Gibran’s The Pr... more This study aims at investigating the extent to which the aesthetic effect (AE) in Gibran’s The Prophet has been maintained among Arab recipients in four translations of this masterpiece, namely Okasha (2000), Nuaimy (2013), Al-ābid (2017), and Antonius (2017). To this end, the source text (ST) AE laden segments and their target text (TT) counterparts are compared in terms of lexical selection, sentence structure, and metaphors employed. Data of the study comprised typical illustrative examples randomly selected for analysis according to Yan Fu’s (2012, cited in Zhang 2013) triple translation criteria of faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance in combination with Nida’s (1964) functional equivalence. Findings of the study revealed that the selected translations exhibit different levels of adequacy in terms of expressing the AE in the TT. Specifically, Okasha’s translation seems more creatively adequate in producing in the TT the approximate AE of the ST, whereas the other translat...
The stigmatized nature of swearwords renders their intercultural transference a problematic issue... more The stigmatized nature of swearwords renders their intercultural transference a problematic issue in film subtitling. This is because cultures differ in their tolerance of swearwords specially when displayed in the media. Accordingly, subtitling translators need to carefully handle the sensitive issue of swearwords. However, although the choice of a particular strategy is influenced by different ideological, cultural and contextual factors, there is consensus that swearwords are either toned down or completely deleted. In light of this, this study attempts to identify the strategies adopted by Arab amateur subtitlers when rendering swearwords in American crime drama movies into Arabic. To achieve this objective, a corpus consisting of the scripts of two of these movies with high occurrence of swearwords and their subtitles in Arabic is collated. Moreover, in the analysis of the translation strategies adopted, Vermeer's (1978/2000) Skopos theorie is utilized and Venuti's (1995) model of 'domestication' and 'foreignization' is adopted to determine the overall subtitlers' translation behavior whether oriented to the source text/culture or target text/culture. The findings of the study indicate that certain domestication translation strategies were adopted to abide by cultural norms in the target culture and certain foreignization strategies were adopted to preserve the spirit of the source text. However, the overall translation behavior was target culture oriented.
The interlingual subtitling of swearwords poses problems to translators due to differences in the... more The interlingual subtitling of swearwords poses problems to translators due to differences in the degree of tolerating the obscenity of such words by various speech communities. To account for the perplexities incurred in the intercultural transference of swearwords, translators adopt attenuation strategies that facilitate their mediating role between cultures. In line with this, the present study attempts to identify the strategies adopted by Arab amateur subtitlers to mitigate the obscenity of swearwords in English movies. It utilizes a corpusbased approach to identify the factors affecting the decisions made by these subtitlers. The content analysis method was used in categorizing swearwords and in the translation comparison process, Toury's (1996) 'coupled pairs' model was adopted to identify attenuation strategies. The findings revealed that the common strategies used to mitigate the obscenity of swearwords are deletion, change of semantic fields, register shift and the use of archaic words, using euphemistic expressions, generalization and linguistic substitution and ambiguity. Moreover, cultural norms play a significant role in choosing the translation strategy to handle swearwords.
Malaysian Journal of Languages and Linguistics (MJLL), 2015
The present study sheds light on some of the problems encountered in the process of subtitling En... more The present study sheds light on some of the problems encountered in the process of subtitling English movies into Arabic by amateur subtitling translators. It adopted a qualitative approach in the analysis of a parallel corpus, which comprised a sample of scripts of English speaking movies and their subtitles in Arabic. This sample includes the scripts of two English celebrity movies (Jarhead, 2005 and Alpha Dog, 2006) and their amateur subtitles in Arabic. The error analysis approach formulated by Bogucki (2009) was adopted with some modifications to suit the analysis approach used in this study. The English scripts and the Arabic subtitles were juxtaposed and the content analysis method was used in the codification and categorisation of the most recurrent problems in the corpus. In the translation comparison process between the source texts and their subtitled versions, Toury's (1995) 'coupled pairs' model with the back translation technique was used. The findings indicate that the most predominant problems in Arabic amateur subtitling fall within the technical, translational and linguistic domains.
Dirāsāt. Al-'ulūm al-insāniyyaẗ wa-al-iǧtimā'iyyaẗ/Dirāsāt. Al-ʻulūm al-insāniyyaẗ wa-al-iǧtimāʻiyyaẗ, Dec 30, 2023
Objectives: This study aims to examine the effect of variations in word derivations in the Holy Q... more Objectives: This study aims to examine the effect of variations in word derivations in the Holy Quran on conveying their communicative impact when translated into English. Specifically, the study seeks to identify which of the selected translations have preserved the intended pragmatic effect triggered by word derivation variations in each Ayah when translated into English. To achieve this objective, the study compiles a corpus consisting of Ayahs containing randomly selected morphological derivation variations from the Holy Quran and their translations in English by ), Pickthall (1930, . The content analysis method was employed to identify instances of word derivation variations in the corpus, and Nida's (1964) principle of equivalent effect was adopted to examine the loss of the communicative impact of these words in each translation. The findings of the study indicate that almost all the selected translations failed to preserve the intended pragmatic effect triggered by the variation in word derivations in the Holy Quran when conveyed to English recipients. The reasons behind this failure might be attributed to the translators' inability to grasp the intended pragmatic implications resulting from morphological variations of words.
The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlo... more The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlocutors in the "Opposite Direction" presented by Al-Jazeera satellite channel. In the heat of discussion, interlocutors resort to certain aggressive strategies to attack each other's face in an attempt to get the floor and instigate the other interviewee to react in a more offensive manner. This situation is usually triggered and intensified by the interviewer who is supposed to be neutral and works into managing the interview. The more offensive the debate is, the more interested the viewers will be. The study collates a corpus consisting of one translated episode into English [25] of the 'Opposite Direction' covering the topic of 'The Clash of Civilization and the Class of Religions' in which the interviewer Faisal Qasim (FQ), a famous journalist on Al-Jazeera Channel invites Wafa Sultan (WS), a writer and a researcher in Los Angles and Ibrahim Al-Khou...
The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlo... more The present paper draws a conversational sketch of impoliteness strategies as employed by interlocutors in the "Opposite Direction" presented by Al-Jazeera satellite channel. In the heat of discussion, interlocutors resort to certain aggressive strategies to attack each other's face in an attempt to get the floor and instigate the other interviewee to react in a more offensive manner. This situation is usually triggered and intensified by the interviewer who is supposed to be neutral and works into managing the interview. The more offensive the debate is, the more interested the viewers will be. The study collates a corpus consisting of one translated episode into English [25] of the ‘Opposite Direction’ covering the topic of ‘The Clash of Civilization and the Class of Religions’ in which the interviewer Faisal Qasim (FQ), a famous journalist on Al-Jazeera Channel invites Wafa Sultan (WS), a writer and a researcher in Los Angles and Ibrahim Al-Khouli (IK), a lecturer a...
This study seeks to investigate the translation orientation of amateur subtitlers when rendering ... more This study seeks to investigate the translation orientation of amateur subtitlers when rendering swearwords in American crime drama movies into Arabic. It focuses on a semantico-pragmatic analysis of such words in the selected movies and their subtitles in Arabic. This study also aims to identify the adopted translation strategies with emphasis on the effect of deletion on the conveyance of the intended meaning of swearwords to the target recipients and the causes of deletion. The study addresses four research questions: 1. To what extent have the semantic fields of swearwords in the movie dialogues been retained in the Arabic subtitles and what causes the resulting shifts? 2. To what extent have the pragmatic functions of swearwords in these movies been preserved in the Arabic subtitles? 3. What are the translation strategies adopted by amateur subtitlers to transfer swearwords in these movies into Arabic? 4. How does the deletion of swearwords in the Arabic subtitles affect the co...
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2019
Swearwords are intentionally employed in movies to express certain pragmatic functions including ... more Swearwords are intentionally employed in movies to express certain pragmatic functions including portraying characters' inner feelings, their social and educational background and the relationship between the characters. Such functions need to be preserved in the interlingual/intercultural subtitling so that the communicative effects of swearwords are duly transferred to the target audience. However, achieving this objective requires a thorough contextual analysis of the relationship between the characters, the intended illocutionary force of the speech acts expressed by the swearwords and the reaction of the addressee to their implied communicative force. A lack of such an analysis may lead to a change in the intended pragmatic functions of swearwords during the subtitling process. In this light, this study sought to investigate the pragmatic functions of swearwords in selected American crime drama movies and their Arabic subtitles, identifying whether the same pragmatic functions of such words have been preserved in the subtitles. The study also attempted to identify the causes and consequences of the resulting (in)congruity between the expressed functions of the swearwords in the movies compared with those expressed by their subtitles in Arabic. To address these objectives, a corpus comprising the scripts of two American crime drama movies exhibiting high occurrences of swearwords and
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2022
This study aims at investigating the extent to which the aesthetic effect (AE) in Gibran’s The Pr... more This study aims at investigating the extent to which the aesthetic effect (AE) in Gibran’s The Prophet has been maintained among Arab recipients in four translations of this masterpiece, namely Okasha (2000), Nuaimy (2013), Al-ābid (2017), and Antonius (2017). To this end, the source text (ST) AE laden segments and their target text (TT) counterparts are compared in terms of lexical selection, sentence structure, and metaphors employed. Data of the study comprised typical illustrative examples randomly selected for analysis according to Yan Fu’s (2012, cited in Zhang 2013) triple translation criteria of faithfulness, expressiveness, and elegance in combination with Nida’s (1964) functional equivalence. Findings of the study revealed that the selected translations exhibit different levels of adequacy in terms of expressing the AE in the TT. Specifically, Okasha’s translation seems more creatively adequate in producing in the TT the approximate AE of the ST, whereas the other translat...
The stigmatized nature of swearwords renders their intercultural transference a problematic issue... more The stigmatized nature of swearwords renders their intercultural transference a problematic issue in film subtitling. This is because cultures differ in their tolerance of swearwords specially when displayed in the media. Accordingly, subtitling translators need to carefully handle the sensitive issue of swearwords. However, although the choice of a particular strategy is influenced by different ideological, cultural and contextual factors, there is consensus that swearwords are either toned down or completely deleted. In light of this, this study attempts to identify the strategies adopted by Arab amateur subtitlers when rendering swearwords in American crime drama movies into Arabic. To achieve this objective, a corpus consisting of the scripts of two of these movies with high occurrence of swearwords and their subtitles in Arabic is collated. Moreover, in the analysis of the translation strategies adopted, Vermeer's (1978/2000) Skopos theorie is utilized and Venuti's (1995) model of 'domestication' and 'foreignization' is adopted to determine the overall subtitlers' translation behavior whether oriented to the source text/culture or target text/culture. The findings of the study indicate that certain domestication translation strategies were adopted to abide by cultural norms in the target culture and certain foreignization strategies were adopted to preserve the spirit of the source text. However, the overall translation behavior was target culture oriented.
The interlingual subtitling of swearwords poses problems to translators due to differences in the... more The interlingual subtitling of swearwords poses problems to translators due to differences in the degree of tolerating the obscenity of such words by various speech communities. To account for the perplexities incurred in the intercultural transference of swearwords, translators adopt attenuation strategies that facilitate their mediating role between cultures. In line with this, the present study attempts to identify the strategies adopted by Arab amateur subtitlers to mitigate the obscenity of swearwords in English movies. It utilizes a corpusbased approach to identify the factors affecting the decisions made by these subtitlers. The content analysis method was used in categorizing swearwords and in the translation comparison process, Toury's (1996) 'coupled pairs' model was adopted to identify attenuation strategies. The findings revealed that the common strategies used to mitigate the obscenity of swearwords are deletion, change of semantic fields, register shift and the use of archaic words, using euphemistic expressions, generalization and linguistic substitution and ambiguity. Moreover, cultural norms play a significant role in choosing the translation strategy to handle swearwords.
Malaysian Journal of Languages and Linguistics (MJLL), 2015
The present study sheds light on some of the problems encountered in the process of subtitling En... more The present study sheds light on some of the problems encountered in the process of subtitling English movies into Arabic by amateur subtitling translators. It adopted a qualitative approach in the analysis of a parallel corpus, which comprised a sample of scripts of English speaking movies and their subtitles in Arabic. This sample includes the scripts of two English celebrity movies (Jarhead, 2005 and Alpha Dog, 2006) and their amateur subtitles in Arabic. The error analysis approach formulated by Bogucki (2009) was adopted with some modifications to suit the analysis approach used in this study. The English scripts and the Arabic subtitles were juxtaposed and the content analysis method was used in the codification and categorisation of the most recurrent problems in the corpus. In the translation comparison process between the source texts and their subtitled versions, Toury's (1995) 'coupled pairs' model with the back translation technique was used. The findings indicate that the most predominant problems in Arabic amateur subtitling fall within the technical, translational and linguistic domains.
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