Cultural references in films: an audience reception study of subtitling into Arabic

This thesis focuses on the issue of cultural references in translation and aims to address some of the identified gaps in the literature. The short descriptive study aims to identify the most used strategies in translating cultural references into Arabic, given that the typologies used to deal with cultural references have been mostly developed considering European languages/contexts. Also, given that the developed typologies used have often ignored the multimodal context in which cultural references participate, focusing mostly on the verbal nature, this study will adopt a multimodal approach. This will allow for the examination of the multimodal context in which the cultural references are built, as well as how this was addressed/not addressed. Additionally, given that most studies conducted until now have focused mainly on theoretical or descriptive approaches, with few studies focusing on how audiovisual products are received and perceived, this study will include reception and perception studies. The reception study aims to investigate the impact of the strategies (those found to be commonly used, as well as alternative strategies) on the viewer’s understanding of the cultural references, while the perception study aims to investigate how viewers perceive the strategies tested in the reception study.

Eventually, this thesis aims to contribute to the study of AVT in general and to the study of AVT into Arabic in specific, filling in the mentioned gaps. Moreover, this thesis is expected to provide readers a cross-cultural understanding of various aspects concerning Arabic AVT, specifically about the reception and perception of cultural references. It also has the potential to significantly impact the practice of translators in Saudi Arabia, given that the data can be used by the translation industry for a possible revision of the subtitling norms into Arabic. The developed model that examines cultural references in its multimodal filmic context, which is capable of supporting both the analysis of verbal and non-verbal cultural references, can also be used in future research to expand the traditional understanding of these references by considering the intermodal relationships between different modes, as well as acknowledging the need to address visual resources in translation.