Downloads: 127 | Views: 185 | Weekly Hits: ⮙1 | Monthly Hits: ⮙1

Research Paper | Language Research | Libya | Volume 7 Issue 12, December 2018

The Manipulation of Power Game and Handling of Culturally-bound Elements in the Dubbing and Subtitling of the Film Omar Mukhtar: Lion of the Desert

Zakia Deeb

Abstract: This study focuses on the representation of the colonizer and colonized and the manipulation of power game in the dubbing and subtitling of the Hollywood film Omar Mukhtar: Lion of the Desert. It also investigates the handling of the culturally bound elements in the translation, particularly in the scenes specific to the host culture and the politically charged discourse. With regard to the scenes taking place in a western context or reference to historical symbols decisions would likely be constrained by certain norms. In this study, choices of translation made by the translator under which these choices were made will also be investigated. The main objective of this study then is to investigate how linguistic manifestations of courage and resistance on the part of the oppressed and brutality and cruelty on the part of the oppressor are rendered in Arabic subtitles/ dubs of this film, and to ascertain whether cuts and shifts in subtitling/ dubbing these concepts markers influence the representation of different characters for Arab viewers. The study also aims to find out whether the film semiotics is distorted by the translation or any interpersonal dimensions are lost due to semantic concision or rhetorical simplification

Keywords: Audiovisual translation, Colonized, Colonizer, Historical films, Omar Mukhtar

Edition: Volume 7 Issue 12, December 2018,

Pages: 1348 - 1356