Translation of cultural references in the subtitling of Anglophone feature films into Arabic: a parallel corpus-based study

The present research study is located within the paradigm of descriptive translation studies and adopts quantitative and qualitative approaches in analysing a corpus of 45 Anglophone feature films distributed evenly across nine film genre clusters. This study aims to detect the most frequent cultural references that appeared in the corpus and to determine if there is a correlation between film genre and the distribution of cultural references. In addition, it intends to identify the most prevalent translation strategies used by subtitlers in tackling cultural references from English into Arabic in the present self-designed parallel corpus and to examine whether subtitlers tended towards source language-oriented or target language-oriented translation strategies when rendering them into Arabic. Finally, the research study intends to investigate whether any identifiable factors played crucial roles in subtitlers' decision-making, as well as to verify if there is a correlation between film genre and the distribution of translation strategies employed by Arabic subtitlers in the treatment of cultural references. The findings of the study are that Personal Names are the most frequent cultural references in the 45-film corpus, followed by Toponyms, Artefacts, and Names of Institutions, Organisations, Fixed Facilities and Permanent Installations. Also, the findings reveal that there is a positive correlation between the distribution of cultural references and certain film genres in the present study, especially in terms of frequency, dialogue density, and extratextuality. The findings also show that subtitlers tended to foreignise the majority of the cultural references, where Borrowing has been the most applied translation strategy. However, after excluding Personal Names, Toponyms, and Names of Institutions, Organisations, Fixed Facilities and Permanent Installations, the TL-oriented translation strategies have become more visible and relatively more dominant than the SL-oriented translation strategies. Furthermore, the results indicate that transculturality, media-specific constraints, centrality, extratextuality, co-text, filmic signs (polysemiotics), and agency play an influential role in Arabic subtitlers' decision-making. Finally, the results reveal that there is some correlation between the distribution of translation strategies and film genre, especially when the three domains (i.e., Personal Names, Toponyms, and Names of Institutions, Organisations, Fixed Facilities and Permanent Installations) have been excluded.