Subtitling in the Context of Technology: Translating Cultural Elements in The Simpsons Series into Arabic
Subtitling in the Context of Technology: Translating Cultural Elements in The Simpsons Series into Arabic

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates how culture-bound terms in The Simpsons series, season 27, are translated from English into Arabic. The study mainly focuses on the types of culture-bound terms and the subtitling strategies used to translate these terms. Moreover, this research addresses the effectiveness of translation strategies in conveying Arab cultural values, norms, and Islamic practices to Arabic-speaking audiences. The investigation, grounded in two theories, namely, Newmark’s taxonomy for culture-bound types and Gottlieb’s taxonomy of subtitling strategies, used a descriptive approach to analyze a dataset of 150 culture-bound terms. The findings show that The Simpsons series includes a variety of religious material, social and metaphorical terms as well as terms of address. Data analysis revealed that subtitling strategies, including transfer, expansion, dislocation, deletion, and imitation, have been extensively employed in conveying culture-bound terms to Arabic-speaking audiences. These strategies were effective in conveying Arab cultural values, norms, and Islamic practices by deleting and toning-down words that might contradict Arabic Islamic values and culture. The study aims to enhance our understanding of how subtitling strategies can be leveraged to preserve elements of Arabic Islamic values and culture.

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