الفهرس 
صفحة العنوانOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This study investigates the difficulties of subtitling Islamic TV programs from Arabic into English. Subtitling is known to be a constrained type of translation owing to the space and time limitations on the screen which allow a maximum of two lines and require a reading speed of 13 characters per second or less. Apart from— and within the restrictions of — this challenge, the subtitler has to deal with other linguistic and cultural pitfalls that are typical of translation which cannot be separated from the stormy global background in which it works and which is marked with political and ideological tensions between the Muslim World and the West. Therefore, this study attempts to answer the following questions:(1) What are the translation pitfalls faced by subtitlers of Islamic TV programs? (2) What are the most appropriate translation strategies that should be adopted by subtitlers to overcome these pitfalls? (3) To what extent is the Functional Approach effective in analyzing the problems of subtitling and offering solutions to them? (4) What are the requirements and qualifications that make a competent subtitler of Islamic programs?To answer these questions, 14 real-life examples and their subtitles have been selected from Iqraa TV and Al-Arabiya Channel and analyzed usingChristiane Nord’s functional model and elements from other theories. A questionnaire has also been conducted to test the findings against participant preferences. Results show five types of problems that are typical of Islamic TV programs: technical, linguistic, rhetorical, cultural and informational, each of which has some subcategories. Instrumental translation has been found to be appropriate for technical, informational as well as language- and culture-specific problems, while documentary translation has been found to present effective solutions to many linguistic and rhetorical problems as well as universal cultural references. While subtitles should be kept clear, concise and idiomatic, they should also reflect source-culture elements which are appreciated by target viewers. A mix of source- and target-culture translation styles is recommended in general to achieve this balance. This study suggests solutions to practical problems in the field, closes some gaps in the research and paves the way for further research deemed necessary to establish audiovisual translation, especially subtitling, as an academic field in Egyptian and Arab universities.
Keywords: Audiovisual translation, subtitling, constrained translation, Islamic TV programs, Functional Approach, documentary/instrumental translation, cultural mediation, intercultural communication.