A Comparative Study of Cultural and Linguistic Adaptation in Two Arabic Subtitle Versions of The Father (2020)

Abstract

The world today is witnessing an increasing expansion in the realm of the streaming platforms, which consequently leads to an urgent need to have high-quality audiovisual translation, especially subtitling. This requirement underlines a crucial issue, which is how to translate culturally specific expressions such as idioms and proverbs, and there is a serious gap of research in comparative studies of how professional subtitlers cope with this issue among Arabic-speaking viewers. To fill this gap, the present work examines the Arabic versions of The Father (2020)—an American movie—using a qualitative comparative approach with the two different approaches taken by the two translators (Mohammad Al-Nuaimi and Nizar Ezzeddine) as the subject of the analysis. Based on a systematic analytical model that is based on functional equivalence, domestication, and foreignization, the study classifies and judges the translator adaptations of the chosen idiomatic and culturally specific utterances. It is evident that the analysis suggests opposing strategic profiles, as one translator is always inclined towards domestication as a tool to acquire cultural fluency, whereas the other is inclined to foreignize at the expense of pragmatism and legibility. Offering empirical information about these strategic options, this study fills the gap between translation theory and practice with valuable information on the nuances of adaptation in modern subtitling.