The Intricacies of Voicing Over Documentaries from English into Arabic: Implications for Translator Training

Date
2021-06-30
Authors
Thawabteh, Mohammad Ahmad
Al-Adwan, Amer
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Abstract
The present paper is designed to shed some light on one of the main subfields of audiovisual translation, namely voice-over, and mainly attempts to capture the intricacies involved in English–Arabic translation of a BBC television documentary entitled NW Great. The sample of the study consists of 10 MA translation students at Al-Quds University, enrolled in Audiovisual Translation I for the academic year 2016/2017. The paper confirms what Orero (2004) is inclined to conclude, that besides voice-over’s main defining features, namely faithfulness and synchrony, etc., student translators are commonly faced with several technical (e.g., synchrony in voice-over, observable in the same way as Orero (2004) argues, close-ups, etc.) and linguistic problems and potential semantic and stylistic loss. The study also has a pedagogical angle thought to be useful to trainers and trainees of the audiovisual translation mode of voice-over.
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Keywords
Audiovisual translation , Arabic voice-over , subtitling , linguistic problems , cultural problems , technical problems
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