The Role of Culture in Dubbing Television Advertisements into Arabic: The Case of Chocolate Commercials

This study aims to explore the transcreation of TV advertisements that were dubbed from English into Arabic. It specifically looked at how the pragmatic concept of presupposition in translation studies guides the micro-translation strategies of cultural themes. I predefined these cultural themes as methods of persuasion, stereotypes, and humor. The multidisciplinarity of the topic allowed the study to employ two theories from psychology—Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943)—and social psychology—Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory (1984)—in the analysis. Within each predefined cultural theme, I identified cultural sub-themes that were influenced by those two theories. The results of the analysis showed two outcomes. First, the micro-translation strategies of those themes were not exclusive to either Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or vernacular dialect in the Arabic language. Second, the results showed that micro-translation strategies are used concurrently across each of the identified cultural sub-themes.