Translation of Taboo Words in IRIB’s Persian Dubbed Movies

Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation

Mehdi  Tima ¹ (English Department, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran)
Roya  Monsefi ² (English Department, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran)
Abolfazl  Ramazani ³ ( English Department, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran)
Reza  Yalsharzeh ⁴ (English Department, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran)

Received: 2022-10-20 Accepted : 2022-12-27 Published : 2024-04-26

Keywords: Audiovisual translation, Dubbing, Deletion, Sharifi and Darchinian&rsquo, s conceptual model, Taboo,

Abstract :

Translating taboos presents an important challenge for the Iranian audio visual translators, and deleting them is the other censorial aspect regarding dominant social constraints. This research attempted to discover the prevailing strategies used in IRIB’s dubbed movies. To this end, the original English movies were compared with their dubbed Persian counterparts based on Sharifi and Darchinian's (2009) conceptual model. All along data collection, relying on a definite set of taboos, the 41 examples in the selected sample of three American movies were found and documented. In the present descriptive study, corpus based research is applied. After classifying the cases based on the theoretical model, taboos had been classified based on their moral, ideological, political, and social nature. The “deletion” strategy is the highest applied strategy in the translation of taboos with the highest frequency (71%). The second general strategy is “taboo to non-taboo” which includes 17%, the third general strategy is “taboo to taboo” with 9%, and the least general strategy for handling taboos is “euphemism” which is 3%. The frequency of the taboos in each of the movies, as well as their frequency in the entire corpus, was measured and discussed. General results and discussion are drawn to suggest future studies on taboo as a social and ideological phenomenon.

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Biodata
Mehdi Tima is an M.A. student of Translation
Studies at the Department of English Language
and Literature, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani
University, Tabriz, Iran. He received his B.A. in
English Language and Literature from Malayer
University, Hamedan. His research interests
include Audiovisual Translation, Hermeneutics,
Cultural Studies and Quranic Translation. He
has also presented some papers in domestic
language conferences and seminars.
Email: [e-mail]
Dr. Roya Monsefi is an assistant professor of
Translation Studies and the Head of English
department at Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran. She received her Ph.D. in
Translation Studies from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia. Her research interests
include children’s literature in translation, translation quality assessment, and translation and media.
Email: [e-mail].i