Gender, Sexual, Ethnic, Color and Disability-related Epithets and Labels Across Languages: Evidence from Arabic Subtitling of English Movies and Series

Abstract

Labels and epithets relating to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, color, and disability have long been divided into acceptable and offensive categories. This paper examines how differences in culture and historical contexts can cause an issue when translating English media into Arabic by examining how they are subtitled in different contexts. Examples of dialogue that used offensive or inoffensive labels were extracted from different media for the purpose of this study, which included four movies, eight series, and one TV show. The films included Passing, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Gook and The Fundamentals of Caring; the series comprised Atlanta, Breaking Bad, Fresh of the Boat, Derry Girls, I Am Not Okay With This, Dead End Paranormal Park, Feel Good, and Degrassi: Next Class; and the TV show was Atypical. The examined translations were chosen with the least potential influence of ideological manipulation and censorship; therefore, they were either Netflix or fan translations. Comparing and contrasting the degree of offense in the source and target texts and analyzing the reasoning behind this, it was found that the English and Arabic terms may have similar components but lacked the same connotations for their language speakers. What makes certain labels positive or neutral and others negative is beyond their semantic components; instead, the weight comes from the background and usage of the terms. Direct translations or even keeping the term as it was originally failed at providing the Arabic-speaking audience the same impact as that of the ST since there is still a contextual gap. This also means that having the same referent does not mean that words have the same sense. This suggests that using target language terms that refer to the same group as the source text could result in inadequate translations. The study recommends that further studies be conducted on how translators may purposely manipulate texts for ideological purposes or to meet censorship criteria.