Abstract

This paper explores the subtitling of culture-specific items (CSIs) from English into Arabic, paying special attention to translation strategy and subtitler agency. The study’s aim is twofold: first, to identify the translation strategies adopted to translate English CSIs into Arabic, and second, to determine whether there are indications of subtitler agency in this cultural transfer. To this end, the study employs quantitative and primarily qualitative analysis of an interview conducted by an Arabic news TV network with President Trump. The data was in the form of more than twenty instances of CSIs, which were extracted from the fourteen-minute interview. It was found that the subtitler(s) employed substitution, direct translation, specification, and other strategies. It was also found that the subtitlers leaned towards a target-oriented approach to rendering CSIs, a finding which proved vital to the second aim of the study. It is argued that subtitlers have a form of agency that is apparent in some of their translational choices.

Key words: Audiovisual Translation (AVT); Translation Studies; Translating culture; Translation Theory; Translation Strategies of culture-specific items