Translating Cultural References in The Open Doorand its Cinematic Adaptation: A Comparative Genre-based Study

Abstract

The main objective of the present study is to examine how far the text genre itself, specifically the two genres of novel and film, can affect the translators' and subtitlers' choice of translation strategies when translating cultural references. Such genre-based comparative studies of cultural references in translation are scarce despite their importance as they can widen the scope of addressing cultural references in both purely written literary translation and subtitling. To serve its objective, the present study provides a detailed analysis ofcultural references in a translated Arabic novel, namely al-Zayyat's الباب المفتوح (The Open Door) (1960), comparing it to its subtitled cinematic adaptation. The study aims at answering a number of research questions: 1. What are the most and least frequent strategies used in translating cultural references in the novel under study? 2. What are the most and least frequent strategies used in translating cultural referencesin the film under study? 3. What is the role played by the features of novel as a text genre in the translation ofcultural references? How effective is this role? 4. What is the role played by the features of film as a text genre in the translation ofcultural references? How effective is this role? 5. What are the translation tendencies of the novel translator versus the film translator according to the case studies? To answer these questions, the study adopts a descriptive quantitative-qualitative approach and uses the taxonomy of cultural references and their translation strategies proposed by Ranzato (2013) as a tool of analysis. The analysis shows that the features of novel and film as text genres have a significant impact on the translator's and subtitler's choice of strategy. On the one hand, the flexible space limits of the novel, the use of only the verbal mode in the source text and the target text, the type of audience of this genre and their ability to control the reading pace have enabledthe novel translator to frequently employ strategies that create a balance between conveying as much as possible of the source culture local colour, and making the target text familiar to the target audience. On the other hand, the multimodal nature of the film, the subtitling spatiotemporal constraints and the varied audience of such text genre have resulted in the film subtitler recurrently using strategies that conform to target culture norms and enhance subtitle readability, even when the loss of source culture aspects may result.