The present paper investigates the difficulties in preserving humour in translating euphemisms in a specific, popular comedy genre: stand-up comedy. The investigation goes beyond the lexical level ...and focuses on the constraints of the audio-visual translation as well.
Society is characterized by a constant flow of multimodal products, which increasingly blur the lines between screen and reality, and audiovisual translation allows overcoming geographical and ...linguistic frontiers between small realities across the planet. However, research has long struggled to adapt its methodologies to effectively analyze such phenomena, and even more to scale its results through larger corpus analyses.
Dora Renna proposes a pioneering framework, informed by the latest trends in audiovisual translation and multimodality and fit to achieve the complex task of operatively including multimodality in a rigorous corpus analysis of source and target versions of films characterized by language variation as a key element of character design.
While language is at the core of her analysis, its role in the broader audiovisual context is explored thanks to a solid network of relations that shed light on linguistic and translational choices as well as on their implications. Framework and methodology are explained in detail and thoroughly applied to the case study to show how this perspective contributes to move a step forward in corpus-based audiovisual translation studies. The results obtained are unexpected and urge readers to overcome old attitudes towards audiovisual translation and multimodal corpora.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has an active gaming community, with Arab gamers being reliant on games produced in Europe, America, and Japan due to the lack of significant game ...production companies in the MENA region. This study explores the gamers’ reactions to the localization process of two video games, namely PUBG and Free Fire. For data collection purposes, a five-point Likert scale questionnaire that consisted of 18 items and six constructs, namely need for subtitled games, technical aspects, language issues, language preference, attitudes to game localization, and future actions and recommendations, was designed to elicit the reactions of 112 participants. Upon analyzing the responses, the findings showed that the better the technical aspects and language issues of the games’ performance, the more positive participants’ attitudes to game localization. The study recommends that further research could be conducted on the localization of video games with different themes into Arabic.
Indirect translation explained Ameri, Saeed; Reza Rezaeian Delouei, Mohammad
The international journal of translation and interpreting research,
01/2024, Letnik:
16, Številka:
1
Book Review, Journal Article
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Review(s) of: Indirect translation explained, by Pieta, H., Maia, R. B., and Torres-Simon, E. (2023); Routledge. ISBN 978-1-003-03522-0
Subtitling lyrics poses a problem regarding conveying the content and the form, which include meaning, rhyme, rhythm, and other musical features. This requires having well-trained professional ...translators to master the rendering of those features in the target language, bearing in mind the constraints imposed by subtitling as an audio-visual mode. This study examines the Arabic subtitled version of English movie lyrics and explores the translators options in rendering their content and form. To this end, sixteen lyrics were extracted from five movies that have been subtitled. The compiled lyrics were classified into different categories based on the translation options proposed by Franzon (2008). The option of translating lyrics without taking the music into consideration was used 11 times, while the option of aesthetic translation was opted for four times. Not translating the lyric was used only once, while the option of creating new lyrics for the music was not adopted in any of the five movies. The study recommends two research areas: exploring dubbed Arabic versions of English movie lyrics and analyzing subtitled lyrics in other language pairs.
Video game localization is the process of adjusting a current video game to make it available, usable, and culturally appropriate to the target audience. This study aims to investigate the strategies ...that translators use in localizing
and
video games into Arabic. The data were extracted from interfaces and in-game captions of the two video games. Due to space constraints, a representative subset of the collected data was then selected and analysed according to the translation strategies proposed by Díaz-Cintas, and Remael (2014). The analysis showed that the localizers have more often used transposition and literal translation strategies. They also tried to adapt the text to suit the target-language culture as much as possible. The findings of this study will be helpful to translators, localizers, and trainers. By adopting the most relevant translation strategies outlined in this article, game localizers will hopefully be better equipped with the mechanisms of video game localization. The current piece of work calls for investing more research efforts towards exploring and targeting a broader array of video game genres in Arabic.
Although technology advancements have increased the availability of screens everywhere, making it possible to watch AV products anytime, the deaf-and-hard-of-hearing (DHH) accessibility to these ...materials in the Arab world is still poor. Only a few Arabic movies with this feature are available via Netflix. In this study, the subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) in The Blue Elephant 2 movie are analyzed. This study qualitatively examines the type of information covered in the subtitles of the investigated Arabic movie for Arab viewers with hearing impairment. It also quantitatively investigates the reactions of people with hearing impairment to the technical aspects of the subtitles using a structured questionnaire, which consisted of five open-ended questions. The qualitative analysis revealed two main types of information, namely, para-linguistic/extra-linguistic and linguistic. The para-linguistic/extra-linguistic aspect includes information about music, speakers, vocal non-linguistic features, and non-verbal signs. The linguistic aspect is related to the code-switching between languages where the speaker may use some languages other than Arabic. The quantitative analysis showed that the participants reacted positively to the technical aspects of the subtitles, including the length and synchrony. They stated that they had enough time to read and process the information included in the subtitles. The paralinguistic information was reflected in the subtitles and helped them better understand the movie. The sample attitude towards SDH was good and positive, and they like to watch more Arabic movies with this feature in the future. This study concludes that more attention to DHH people in terms of accessibility to audiovisual content should be paid. This will likely improve their linguistic and cultural skills and help them integrate more with the surrounding community. The study’s findings have substantial implications for enhancing DHH individuals’ access to audiovisual content in Jordan and the wider Arab region. The study emphasizes the need to deliver high-quality SDH that incorporates both linguistic and paralinguistic information to DHH viewers in order to improve their viewing experience.
People with visual impairment need a special form of audio-visual translation (AVT) to have access to multimedia products such as series and movies. Audio description (AD) is an AVT mode that ...describes what is happening in the images through words. It is a necessary accessibility tool that allows the blind and visually impaired to visualize scenes through spoken material. This study examines the types of information covered in the AD of the Jordanian Netflix drama series ‘
(
) following a corpus-assisted approach. Subsequent to watching the series and transcribing the verbal AD content, the researchers conducted frequency and concordance (KWIC) analyses using the Wordsmith 6 (WS6) software package to identify the categories of information covered in the AD. The findings showed six categories, namely description of characters, description of actions, interpersonal interactions, description of settings, emotional states, and on-screen texts. This study recommends conducting further research on AD in the Arab world to expand the accessibility services provided by official TV channels and streaming platforms.
Subtitling Arabic humour into English Hanan Al-Jabri; Ghadeer Alhasan; Sukayna Ali
European journal of humour research,
06/2023, Letnik:
11, Številka:
2
Journal Article
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This article examines how humour in Arabic stand-up comedies is translated into English in an audio-visual context. The study uses a case study of Arabic stand-up comedies streamed on Netflix, ...including Live from Beirut by Adel Karam and Comedians of the World/ Middle East. The shows which are subtitled into English involve a variety of Arab comedians speaking different dialects, including the Levant dialect (Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian) and Gulf dialects, particularly the Saudi dialect. While several studies were conducted to examine the translation of English humour into Arabic, very few explore the translation of Arabic humour into English, especially in the realm of audio-visual translation. Arabic and English are two different languages reflecting different norms and cultures and, therefore, many linguistic and cultural challenges are expected to arise in the process of translation between them. The study draws on Pederson’s (2005) strategies for translating cultural references and Díaz-Pérez’s (2013) strategies for translating wordplay and puns. The study identifies two types of humour used in the Arabic stand-up comedies, namely language-restricted jokes (wordplay, puns, language variation, and taboo language) and culture-restricted jokes which require knowledge about the concept or character being referred to. Several translation strategies were used by Netflix subtitlers to render these types of jokes into English, including paraphrasing, generalizing, specification, substitution, and omission.
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