Subtitling Saudi Arabic slang into English: the case of "The Book of the Sun" on Netflix

The study addresses the challenge of subtitling culture-bound slang from Arabic into English, a relatively underexplored direction compared to English-to-Arabic research. Drawing on the prevalence of slang in films aiming for authentic dialogue, and the growth of Arabic content on global platforms like Netflix, the paper focuses on Saudi Arabic slang in the 2020 Netflix film "The Book of the Sun." It investigates: (1) the characteristics of Saudi slang (originality, conciseness, humor), (2) strategies used to render slang into English, and (3) the effectiveness of these strategies. The work is motivated by the cultural specificity, emotional tone, and variability of slang, coupled with technical constraints of subtitling that complicate faithful transfer of meaning and effect across languages.

The paper surveys definitions and properties of slang, noting its group-bound nature, creative and conscious use, and characteristics such as humor, conciseness, originality, and instability (Andersson & Trudgill; Frazer & Eble; Fromkin et al.; Zhou & Fan). It highlights how new slang arises by coining forms or assigning new meanings to existing words (Linhua) and that slang usage varies by social factors. In audiovisual translation, subtitling is framed as the dominant mode for rendering multimodal content (Díaz-Cintas; Díaz-Cintas & Remael), subject to spatial and temporal constraints and the transformation from spoken to written code. Prior research on subtitling cultural terms in the English–Arabic pair often treats slang tangentially, with paraphrase, euphemism, and omission common when equivalents are lacking (Hashish & Hussein). Few studies address Arabic-to-English slang subtitling; Al-Kharabsheh & Yassin (2017) noted misinterpretation of religious slang, omissions, and cultural meaning loss in Palestinian Arabic-to-English subtitles. For strategy analysis, the study adopts Pedersen’s (2005) typology for culture-specific items: official equivalent, retention, specification, direct translation, generalization, cultural substitution (including paraphrase), and omission.

Data consist of Saudi Arabic slang instances from the film "The Book of the Sun" (Netflix, released 2020; story set in 2010 centered on high school seniors producing YouTube videos). Researchers, as native Arabic speakers, repeatedly viewed the film with English subtitles to manually identify slang, using the Oxford English Dictionary definition of slang as the identification criterion. Slang items were categorized as negative, positive, or neutral. Each item was analyzed for originality, conciseness, and humor (per Zhou & Fan’s distinctions; instability was excluded due to the need for longitudinal measurement). Subtitling strategies were identified using Pedersen’s (2005) typology. Back translations were provided to illustrate the subtitler’s renderings. The film was selected due to the abundance of youth slang and the relative scarcity of Saudi content on global platforms, ensuring sufficient examples for analysis.

- The dataset contained 36 slang items: 22 negative (61%), 5 positive (14%), and 9 neutral (25%). - Creation mechanism: 100% of identified slang involved assigning new meanings to existing words; some achieved conciseness through mapping into a verb template (e.g., morphological patterns akin to “farsala”). - Strategies observed: generalization, paraphrase, official equivalent, direct translation, cultural substitution, and omission. Aggregated counts reported indicate generalization was used 13 times and paraphrase 11 times; only six instances were rendered using English slang (official equivalents), underscoring limited one-to-one equivalents. - Category-level illustrations show frequent use of generalization for negative slang and notable omissions and paraphrases for positive and neutral slang. - Effectiveness: Across examples, core denotational meaning was often transferred, but key slang attributes—creativity/originality, conciseness, and humor—were frequently lost. Even when official equivalents were used, brevity and hyperbolic effects in Arabic were diminished. - Examples highlighted losses due to omission (e.g., “bazir”), generalization (e.g., fines via “lasafa”), and paraphrase (e.g., “hatjeeb al-eid”), while some cultural substitutions (“hottie”) captured denotation but not source imagery.

The findings address the research questions by showing that Saudi Arabic slang in the film is highly creative, concise, and often humorous, yet these attributes are not consistently preserved in English subtitles. Constraints inherent to subtitling and cultural non-equivalence lead subtitlers to favor generalization and paraphrase, which aid comprehension but reduce the expressive and socio-pragmatic force of the original. Even official equivalents can miss morphological compactness or hyperbole that amplify tone in Arabic. The limited availability of directly corresponding English slang terms, coupled with the need to fit spatial-temporal constraints, contributes to pragmatic and cultural meaning loss. Overall, the strategies used are largely ineffective at conveying the full communicative effect of the source slang to English audiences.

The study contributes an Arabic-to-English perspective on subtitling slang, documenting 36 Saudi Arabic slang items from a Netflix film and analyzing their properties and renderings. It shows that subtitling strategies predominantly rely on generalization and paraphrase, which prioritize clarity but compromise creativity, concision, and humor; only a few cases use English slang equivalents. The authors underscore significant linguistic and cultural asymmetries that impede one-to-one transfer of slang effects. The article closes with a call for further research; specific future directions are not detailed in the provided excerpt.

- The analysis excludes the ‘instability’ (lifespan) property of slang due to the need for long-term observation. - Data are drawn from a single Saudi film on Netflix, yielding 36 examples; findings may not generalize across genres, regions, or larger corpora. - Reliance on native-speaker judgment for slang identification, while justified, may introduce subjectivity. - The study examines subtitles as presented on Netflix; alternative subtitle versions or dubbing were not analyzed.