Mirroring Arabic Metaphors and Values Through Subtitling As-Hab Wala Aaz

This MA thesis presents a translation from Arabic into English of Netflix’s first Arabic movie, As-hab Wala Aaz " أعز وال أصحاب“, a remake of the Italian movie Perfetti Sconosciuti. The thesis includes a commentary and analysis of the issues related to cultural references, specifically metaphors, which pose difficulties during the process of subtitling the movie and the issue of sensitive expressions. In the movie, actors and actresses are from two different countries, and this means that the viewer has to contend with different dialects and cultural references. The commentary shows how Newmark’s translating strategies (1988) help produce subtitles that transfer the source cultural discourse. In order to solve the first issue of subtitling metaphors, I used four main strategies: converting a metaphor to its sense, reproducing the same image in the target language (TL), replacing the image in the source language with a standard image in the target language, and deleting a metaphor. Another issue addressed is sensitive expressions. As a remake of Perfetti Sconosciuti, the movie tackles sensitive issues and wordings that do not commonly exist in Arabic movies. Therefore, I followed Al-Adwan’s (2015) euphemisation model suggested strategies for movie subtitles to find solutions while subtitling these sensitive expressions. I used three main strategies: semantic misrepresentation, omission and widening. Subtitling this movie was challenging due to the overlapping dialogues, timing, and technical constraints. However, by drawing on Newmark’s model (1988) and using the euphemisation model (2015), I found that the strategies suggested by both models are applicable when attempting to produce subtitles that could be suitable for co-viewing.