logo
ResearchBunny Logo
Strategies of translating swear words into Arabic: a case study of a parallel corpus of Netflix English-Arabic movie subtitles

Linguistics and Languages

Strategies of translating swear words into Arabic: a case study of a parallel corpus of Netflix English-Arabic movie subtitles

H. Abu-rayyash, A. S. Haider, et al.

This fascinating study by Hussein Abu-Rayyash, Ahmad S. Haider, and Amer Al-Adwan investigates how Netflix subtitlers tackle the challenge of translating 1564 English swear words into Arabic. With key strategies such as omission and softening, discover how cultural nuances influence translation choices.

00:00
00:00
Playback language: English
Abstract
This corpus-assisted study explores Netflix subtitlers' strategies for translating 1564 English swear words into Arabic, using a 699,229-word parallel corpus of 40 English movies and their Arabic subtitles. Three main strategies were identified: omission (most frequent, varying from 40% to 66% across genres), softening (second most frequent, 20-39%), and swear-to-non-swear (least frequent, 11-21%). The study highlights the impact of cultural constraints and censorship on translation choices and recommends further research on various audiovisual translation modes.
Publisher
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES COMMUNICATIONS
Published On
Jan 30, 2023
Authors
Hussein Abu-Rayyash, Ahmad S. Haider, Amer Al-Adwan
Tags
translation strategies
subtitling
censorship
swear words
cultural constraints
audiovisual translation
Listen, Learn & Level Up
Over 10,000 hours of research content in 25+ fields, available in 12+ languages.
No more digging through PDFs, just hit play and absorb the world's latest research in your language, on your time.
listen to research audio papers with researchbunny