Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction
Due to the prevalence of swearing in popular Hollywood films, a cross-cultural challenge arises when translating these films into socio-cultural contexts where swearing is more severely proscribed. The present study aims to investigate how swear words are translated into Arabic and whether significa...
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Group
2025-12-01
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| Series: | Cogent Arts & Humanities |
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| Online Access: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/23311983.2025.2457222 |
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| author | Yousef Sahari |
| author_facet | Yousef Sahari |
| author_sort | Yousef Sahari |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Due to the prevalence of swearing in popular Hollywood films, a cross-cultural challenge arises when translating these films into socio-cultural contexts where swearing is more severely proscribed. The present study aims to investigate how swear words are translated into Arabic and whether significant differences exist between professional subtitles and those created by fans in terms of translation strategies. For this study, the film ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994), written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, serves as a case study. A quantitative analysis was conducted to determine the frequency of swearing and the translation strategies used in the official DVD subtitles versus the internet fansubs. The goal was to ascertain whether significant differences exist between these two subtitled versions. In addition to the quantitative findings, a qualitative analysis is presented. The results indicate that fansubs tend to retain more swear words than official subtitles and that the choice of translation strategy is influenced by the type of swearing employed. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-3a32044b1bf44fb091882af3eed6286d |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2331-1983 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-12-01 |
| publisher | Taylor & Francis Group |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Cogent Arts & Humanities |
| spelling | doaj-art-3a32044b1bf44fb091882af3eed6286d2025-02-04T04:34:26ZengTaylor & Francis GroupCogent Arts & Humanities2331-19832025-12-0112110.1080/23311983.2025.2457222Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fictionYousef Sahari0Department of English Language and Literature, University of Bisha, Bisha, Saudi ArabiaDue to the prevalence of swearing in popular Hollywood films, a cross-cultural challenge arises when translating these films into socio-cultural contexts where swearing is more severely proscribed. The present study aims to investigate how swear words are translated into Arabic and whether significant differences exist between professional subtitles and those created by fans in terms of translation strategies. For this study, the film ‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994), written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, serves as a case study. A quantitative analysis was conducted to determine the frequency of swearing and the translation strategies used in the official DVD subtitles versus the internet fansubs. The goal was to ascertain whether significant differences exist between these two subtitled versions. In addition to the quantitative findings, a qualitative analysis is presented. The results indicate that fansubs tend to retain more swear words than official subtitles and that the choice of translation strategy is influenced by the type of swearing employed.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/23311983.2025.2457222Audiovisual translationEnglish-Arabic subtitlingfansubsPulp Fictionsubtitlingswearing |
| spellingShingle | Yousef Sahari Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction Cogent Arts & Humanities Audiovisual translation English-Arabic subtitling fansubs Pulp Fiction subtitling swearing |
| title | Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction |
| title_full | Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction |
| title_fullStr | Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction |
| title_full_unstemmed | Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction |
| title_short | Rendering swearing across cultures: arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction |
| title_sort | rendering swearing across cultures arabic professional subtitles and fansubs of pulp fiction |
| topic | Audiovisual translation English-Arabic subtitling fansubs Pulp Fiction subtitling swearing |
| url | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/23311983.2025.2457222 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT yousefsahari renderingswearingacrossculturesarabicprofessionalsubtitlesandfansubsofpulpfiction |