Biogoted film censorship in the arab world : an implicit subtitling strategy for ideological asymmetries

Abstract

This thesis intends to examine the multi-faceted interplay between Censorship and Audio-visual Translation (AVT) in the Arab region and particularly in Lebanon, focusing on how censorship controls and regulates the English-Arabic subtitling process. An audio-visual script is only meaningful when it carries within its subtitled lines the original film’s identity, culture and feel. This thesis will try to demonstrate how censorship policies can hinder the message conveyance and widen the cultural gap between the source language and target language. It will show the impact of these censorship policies on faithfulness and the ‘Subtitlers’ reliance on the Domestication strategy as a result, in order to conform to the target culture, no matter how weighty the informational and cultural loss would be. More specifically, the paper will go over the multiple subtitling techniques applied by translation agencies and companies with the aim of toning down or muting certain elements of the scripts’ lines. Such techniques are used in major topics that censorship covers, ranging from beliefs systems and ideologies, to everything considered as Taboo in the region. The purpose of this thesis is to prove that censorship in the region is a morally-driven imperative that dictates a specific translation methodology that is applied in function of the films/series genres. The negative impact of censorship on subtitling will be highlighted throughout the paper by addressing thereby all the taboo themes infringed by censorship entailing; feminism, racism, sexism, ageism, homosexism, sexual connotations, religion, swear words and politics. This research will focus solely on the main Films/Series genres and therefore, “Dubbing” and “Voice Over” records will be excluded.