Rendering of Culture-Bound References from English into Arabic: Subtitling and Dubbing of Personal Names in Children's Cartoons

Rendering of Culture-Bound References from English into Arabic: Subtitling and Dubbing of Personal Names in Children's Cartoons

Dr. Samia Mohsen al-Jabri

Head of academic relations and acceptance

Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission in Ottawa

Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Canada

Abstract. Although children's animated cartoons constitute a major part of the audio-visual material available to children in the Arab world, this area of translation studies has not been extensively researched. This paper investigates the cultural problems associated with the dubbing and subtitling of names in children’s cartoons into Arabic. The data is derived from three Disney cartoons dubbed and subtitled from English into Arabic. The data analysis is based on Pedersen’s (2005) model. The results indicate that the strategies used in dubbing are mainly target language oriented, whereas those used in subtitling are largely source language oriented.

Keywords: Children’s cartoons; names; cultural references; audiovisual translation; subtitling; dubbing; strategies.