Taboos in IRIB s Dubbed Hollywood Movies: A Look at Translation of Culture-Bound Elements

Taboos in IRIB s Dubbed Hollywood Movies: A Look at Translation of Culture-Bound Elements Mahmood Hashemian 1, Azizullah Mirzaei 2, Maryam Hosseini 3 1,2,3. Shahrekord University m72h@hotmail.com mirzaei-a@lit.sku.ac.ir mhosseini12@ymail.com Abstract Different cultures express their idiosyncrasies in a culture-bound way. Cultural aspects if not the only are among the most arduous tasks in rendition of audiovisual materials from the SL into the TL. This study aimed at investigating the applied strategies in rendering taboos, from English to Persian, in 5 dubbed Hollywood movies by IRIB, namely Sudden Death (1995), Family Business (1989), Welcome to Collinwood (22), Deadly Impact (29), and Law Abiding Citizen (29). Original movies were compared with their dubbed versions. Accordingly, the taboo expressions were extracted and compared with the Persian translations in the dubbed movies. Adapting to Venuti s (1995) strategies in translation studies (i.e., domestication and foreignization), the results were interpreted through the SPSS software. Analysis of the chi-square indicated that the p-value was not significant at χ 2 (16, = 5) = 39.17, p =, considering p.5. Besides, analysis of the data indicated that deletion, with the highest frequency (53.3%), was the topmost used strategy in the rendition of the taboo expressions. Therefore, Iranian audiovisual translators mainly tend to localize or domesticate the translation of taboo expressions while dubbing. This study will contribute to the proper translation of taboos in audiovisual translation, especially the dubbing field. Key Words: Culture-Bound Elements, Audiovisual Materials, SL, TL, Taboo, Domestication, Foreignization, Audiovisual Translation 1. Introduction Language as an effective means of communication is highly attached to the culture which, as Yule (29) stated, is considered as socially acquired knowledge (p. 216). Culture is considered as the building blocks of all languages and, according to Yule, it is a phenomenon acquired, like L1, without any conscious awareness. House (29), moreover, defined culture as a continuum of conventions and values which are shared out through every speech community. Therefore, beyond doubt, language and culture are strongly interwoven so far as language is considered as an expression of culture and culture is expressed toward language. As a way of expression in almost all languages, taboos are considered as inseparable parts of every language and culture which take the richness of the languages away if they are going to be used in inappropriate social situations. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (21) defines taboo as a subject, word, or activity that people avoid because it is extremely offensive or embarrassing (p. 1793) and, as Ljung (211) states, taboos can be put into five major categories or theme: religious theme, scatological theme, sex organ theme, sexual activities theme, and the mother theme. Besides, translating cultural terms amongst which taboo expressions are included in can be considered as one of the main difficulties in audiovisual translation (AVT) for almost all translators, especially when the process of translation is going on between two different languages, as Tweet (211) states, and therefore different cultures. To Newmark (1988), translation is a craft consisting in the attempt to replace a written message and/or statement in one language by the same message and/or statement in another language (p. 19). Relating to the culturally-bound elements, it is somehow impossible to translate what is presented in source language (SL) into same message and/or statement in target language (TL), as Newmark states, though. Indeed, the meaning of these kinds of elements strongly link to the specific cultural context which they originate. By the advent of audiovisual materials (AVMs), people s access to screen materials has been raised. Furthermore, USA as the first exporter of AVT in the world had to translate its dominant work in Spanish for Spanish film industry. On the one hand, the translation of Spanish products was necessary 1

and, on the other hand, there were always some interfering factors in the process of translation which caused problems, not only for translators, according to Tweet (211), but also for the TL people. From among the category of those problematic issues in translation, taboo words and cultural transfer can be mentioned. Moreover, movie makers have to reflect the real and authentic language of people they use in everyday society in order to make their movies more tangible for their audience. Besides, taboo words are somehow an ever-present part in nowadays USA s movies in which in the process of translating these movies into Iranian society by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has to be changed and sometimes censored in order to be compatible to the TL society s values. Furthermore, the scene itself is informative, as Ivarsson (1992) states, due to the fact that the audience is watching the scene, and therefore translation in AVMs is used as an aid. By the way, AVT has its own difficulty which Chiaro (29) classified into three major categories: 1. Strongly culture-specific terms (e.g., people s name or places) 2. Language-specific features (e.g., taboo expressions and swear words) 3. Overlapping areas between language and culture Some taboo words are common among the SL and the TL, whereas some others are specific to a culture. There is no need to elaborate that translators have no problem to find the best equivalent facing with taboo expressions common between the SL and the TL, but the tension exactly rises encountering with taboos specific to a culture. Moreover, some USA movies contain offensive scenes, dialogue, or monologue. Furthermore, in order to keep the original artistic integrity of the movie, taboo words should be translated when they are uttered, though offensive. Pym (21) states that translation can be seen as a general activity of communication between cultural groups (p. 143). Therefore, translators not only deal with words, but also they are engaged with the TL culture. Nevertheless, Iran s Islamic culture with its religious theme is highly different from that of America, and therefore censorship is used as a medium to compensate for the cultural differences caused by taboos. This study was administered through using Venuti s (1995) strategies in cross-cultural translation, namely domestication and foreignization. Domestication, as Venuti states, covers adherence to domestic literary canons by carefully selecting the text (p. 2). On the contrary, foreignization stands for choosing a foreign text and developing a translation method along lines which are excluded by dominant cultural values in the target language (p. 2). To put the whole story in a nutshell, this paper attempted to investigate the quality of dubbed taboo expressions of American movies into Persian by IRIB through comparing the dubbed versions with the original ones to discover the different strategies applied in translating taboo expressions and to recognize the role of censorship in taboo translation in Iran s media through using Venuti s cross-cultural strategies in translation. According to the common goal of all media, IRIB has the same goal to increase its audiences. To that end, a large number of foreign movies rushed into Iran's media after the Islamic Revolution of Iran. As mentioned before in this section, taboo words are highly reflected nowadays in American movies by movie makers not only to reflect the authentic language of the American society in the movies, but also to make movies more tangible for the audience. It is, also, mentioned that taboo expressions are an inseparable parts in every language, and the language of movies is not an exception. Considering the task of audiovisual translators, culture-bound elements like taboo words are the most problematic issues in the process of translating, and audiovisual translators try not to translate these words offensive language due to various cultural values and considerations. Translating culture-bound elements is amongst the most challenging tasks almost for all translators. The problem even deteriorates confronting with AVMs, especially movies for audiovisual translators due to the fact that the audience has direct access to a great deal of the original material, which is the visual. Confronting this fact, this paper aims to investigate different aspects, strategies, and quality of rendering taboo expressions according to the TL s culture base on Venuti s (1995) cultural strategies in translation, namely domestication and foreignization. 2. Literature Review 2.1 Taboo Language The term taboo was derived from Tongan tabu in the 18 th century which means forbidden. Allan and Burridge (26) state that taboos arise out of social constraints on the individual s behavior 2

where it can cause discomfort, harm, or injury (p. 1). Furthermore, they considered six different areas for taboos in Western world: 1. Bodies and their effluvia 2. The organs and acts of sex 3. Diseases, death and killing, physical and mental handicap 4. Religion and church, naming and addressing sacred persons, beings, objects, and places 5. Food gathering, preparation, and consumption 6. Prostitution, narcotics, and criminal activity Furthermore, taboo usage may have different functions and, as Jay (29, p. 155) stated, using a taboo word or swearing is like using the horn on your car, which can be used to signify a number of emotions (e.g., anger, frustration, joy, surprise). Talking about how cultural meanings are expressed in language, Wardhaugh (26) believes that language is used to avoid conveying some specific elements while expressing some others. All in all, the reason why we consider some words as taboos is that they are related to certain issues related to certain time and places and must not be veiled, but in its own situation. 2.2 Concept of orm in Translation Recognition of the concept of norm, as Toury (24) mentioned, would lead us to a better understanding of translation strategies. Munday (28) believes that norms are elements specific to cultures, societies, and time, being sociocultural limitations which are acquired by persons during the educational and socializing processes (p. 112), but he still confesses that the best concept of norms is defined by Toury (24): The translation of general values or ideas shared by a community as to what is right or wrong, adequate or inadequate into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations, specifying what is prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain behavioral dimension. (p. 25) 2.3 Venuti s Strategies in Translation The process of translation between two languages is not only an act of transferring the SL words with the TL; translation deals with the communication between different cultures, too. Nida (1964) pointed out that the larger cultural context is of utmost importance in understanding the meaning of any message; for words have meanings only in terms of the total cultural setting (p. 244). Domestication and foreignization are two fundamental strategies presented by the American translation theorists Lawrence Venuti. According to Venuti (1995, p. 2) domestication refers to an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to TL cultural values, bring the author back home, whereas foreignization is an ethnodeviant pressure on those (cultural) values to register the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text, sending the reader abroad. Domestication is the strategy of making a text closely adaptive to the culture of the TL, and foreignization is the strategy of keeping information from the SL which intentionally breaks the conventions of TL to maintain its meaning. The researchers, here, applied Venuti s strategies in translating culture-bound elements, amongst which taboo expressions are included in order to see whether or not the applied strategies in translating the taboo expressions in action American movies are compatible to the Iranian culture. Also, Toury (1995) introduced three kinds of norms in translation: Initial, preliminary, and operational. Initial norms shape the continuum of adequate and acceptable translation, preliminary norms refer to translation policy and directness of translation, and operational norms stand for the direct decision about translation during the act of translation. Before, Toury in 198 defined an acceptable translation as a kind of translation which is oriented toward the TL norms and its culture. Sedighi and Najian Tabrizi (212) aimed to investigate the frequent strategies in dubbing taboo words and sentences in some romantic films dubbed from English into Persian 3 years after Iran s Islamic Revolution through using Toury s (1995) proposed framework for norm classification. Their study also investigated the norms which contributed movie dubbers and subtitlers to translate taboo words from English into Persian during that period of time. Finally, they found out that euphemism with 73% had the topmost frequency in dubbing the taboos in the romantic movies. Vossoughi and Etemad Hosseini (213) state that in the process of translation, culture is one of the major factors that can cause so many problems, especially when the ST and the TT belong to different 3

cultures. The problem even gets more serious when the concept exists in both ST and TT, but with different expressive meaning. Through their study, they aimed to investigate norms of translating taboo words and taboo concepts after Iran s Islamic Revolution by using Toury s (1995) framework for classification of norms in translation studies. The corpus of their study was Coelho s novels between 199 and 25 and their Persian translations which were prepared and analyzed manually to discover whether the norms were obeyed or not. The finding indicated that the dominant ideology in Iran was a determining factor in the process of decision making by the translators (p. 1). In order to get a comprehensive insight to this issue, hence, this study focused on the following research questions: 1. What is the most frequent strategy used for the translation of taboo expressions into the TL? 2. Do these strategies distributed equally in rendering these movies? 3. Method 3.1 Instruments The materials used in this study consist of five randomly selected action American movies dubbed by IRIB, a brief introduction of each film is listed in Table 1: Table 1 A Brief Introduction of the Selected American Movies Dubbed by IRIB Movies Release Year Broadcasting Original Run Dubbed Run Director Year in IRIB Time (Min) Time (Min) Sudden Death 1995 213 11 14 Petter Hyams Family 1989 213 11 85 Sidney Lumet Business Welcome to 22 214 86 7 Mikael Solomon Collinwood Deadly Impact 29 213 93 76 Robert Kurtzman Law Abiding Citizen 29 213 18 16 F. Gary Gray Selecting the five action American movies from Soroush Sima Company, the official AVT center in Iran, the original and dubbed versions were compared both in the case of scene censorship and taboo translation. 3.2 Procedure Gathering the American dubbed movies from Soroush Sima Company, the researchers compared the dubbed movies with their original versions to search for the censored parts in the translations and to see which strategies Iranian audiovisual translators have taken to dub the taboo expressions. Besides, the following criteria were considered by the researchers in selecting the movies: 1. Selecting the dubbed movies by IRIB 2. Gathering the movies from Soroush Sima Company which is an official AVT company in Iran 3. Containing the high frequency of taboo words in each movie 4. Selecting movies in action genre Furthermore, the subtitled movies were not be selected due to the fact that they are not translated by an official AVT company. After gathering the data by comparing the original and dubbed versions of movies, the researchers checked them to see whether they are adaptive to domestication and foreignization, that is, Venuti s (1995) cultural strategies in the translations. After collecting the required data, using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22, the researchers applied a frequency table as a foreground for the investigation; after that, chi-square was run to recognize the quality and adaptive strategies in translating the taboo expressions. 4. Results In order to answer the first research question, regarding to the most frequent strategy applied in rendering the American action movies, the descriptive statistics were run through cross tabulation. The 4

results indicated that deletion was the topmost used strategy in rendition of the movies, according to Table 2. Table 2 Cross-Tabulation of Movies and Strategies 1= "Sudden Death," 2 = "Family Business," 3 = "Welcome to Collinwood," 4 =" Deadly Impact," 5 = "Law Abiding Citizen" 1 = "Taboo to Taboo," 2 = "Taboo to Nontaboo," 3 = "Euphemism," 4 = "Deletion," 5 = "Modulation" 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Total 5 1 34 4 8 61 Expected 5.7 12.9 23.2 5.7 13.6 61. 3 13 1 3 12 41 Expected 3.8 8.6 15.6 3.8 9.2 41. 4 8 11 11 1 44 Expected 4.1 9.3 16.7 4.1 9.8 44. 4. 16 35 64 11 4 166 Expected 15.4 35. 63.1 15.4 37.1 166. 5. 1 1 Expected.1.2.4.1.2 1. Total 29 66 119 29 7 313 Expected 29. 66. 119. 29. 7. 313. Investigating the second research question, also, the presented results in Table 3 indicated that the five applied strategies had different levels of distributions, though the applied strategies were the same. Table 3 Chi-Square Test Results Asymp. Sig. Value df (2-sided) Pearson Chi-Square 39.172 a 16.1 Likelihood Ratio 3.614 16.15 Linear-by-Linear.18 1.671 Association N of Valid Cases 313 a. 9 cells (36.%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is.9. 5. Discussion and Conclusion Comparing the dubbed movie with their original version, a pattern gained for taboo translation in dubbed movies in IRIB. Through this pattern, some taboo expressions were translated into less offensive taboo words in TL. For instance, the uttered statement just doesn t fuck up his life was rendered into به زندگی اون ديگه گند نزن in Persian. Some other taboos were rendered into nontaboo words. Among this category, for instance, you are really an asshole sometimes were rendered بعضی وقتا خيلی اعصاب خردکن ميشیinto in Persian. Deletion, with the highest frequency in the process of rendering AVMs, lead us, completely, to the world of censorship. Sometimes, American people use some special taboo words just for emphasizing a certain part of their utterances. This routine method of putting stress on certain part of speaking, through using taboo expressions, is not acceptable in Iranian culture. Adverb using is the 5

topmost used strategy if not the only for emphasizing considered part of utterance in Iranian culture, instead. Moreover, scene omission was amongst other strategies in AVT, especially in the dubbing field. Scene omission, thus, is the significant reason for the differences between the original and dubbed runtime, according to Table 1. Through this strategy, offensive scenes that are not compatible with target culture must be omitted. To put the story in another word, the case of censorship in these movies were ranged from word units (censoring taboo words) to the censorship of the scenes. Euphemism, as a form of disguising strongly offensive taboo words into less offensive ones, is another strategy in rendering AVMs. For instance, most four-lettered words those taboo words containing four characters in their written form like shit and fuck were mainly translated to لعنتی in Persian. Modulation was the last observed strategy used in rendition of these movies. Having the least frequency, even though, this strategy was observed in rendition, too. For instance, the statement fucking stop! was rendered into! عجله کن in Persian. In fact, a negative taboo utterance was translated into a positive nontaboo statement. It is crystal clear that not all the information rushed into society through AVMs can aid to the human growth, but sometimes can act vice versa concerning the issue that each individual society prepares its AVMs according to its audience culture. Entering these materials to other countries with different cultures, these AVMs must change in order to be compatible with the TL culture. Censorship, therefore, as a government tool and as a way of adapting SL utterance into TL utterance, considering the TL culture, is a preferable way by IRIB s media to prevent harmful thoughts to be injected into Iranian society. As to Table 2, thus, deletion was the most frequent used strategy applied in rendering American action movies. Moreover, the chi-square result was not significant at χ 2 (16, = 5) = 39.17, p =, considering p.5. This presented result indicated that although the same strategies were applied in rendition of these American action movies, the distribution of the applied strategies were not the same. In order to creating a fluent target text, audiovisual translators prefer to adapt the text according to the TL culture. In another word, almost all audiovisual translators were completely familiar with the Iranian culture and they knew that they must translate the SL in a way compatible to the TL culture. Domestication, as Venuti (1995) states, is highly adaptive to the TL culture, and therefore audiovisual translator try to render taboo expression in a way that TL audience do not find it offensive with their cultural values. Hence, deletion, translating taboos to nontaboo expressions in TL culture, and euphemism are the applied strategies adaptive to Venuti s (1995) domestication which is applied in more than 8% of the cases (8.19%). Besides, in only 19.8% of the cases foreignization applied through translating taboo words into their taboo equivalent in TL culture. References Allan, K., & Burridge, K. (26). Forbidden words: Taboo and the censoring of language. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Chiaro, D. (29). Issues in audiovisual translation. In J. Munday (Ed.), The Routledge companion to translation studies (pp. 141-165). Abingdon, England: Routledge. House, J. (29). Translation. England: Oxford University Press. Ivarsson, J. (1992). Subtitling for the media: A handbook of an art. Stockholm, Sweden: Transedit. Jay, T. (29). The utility and ubiquity of taboo words. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 153-161. Ljung, M. (211). Swearing: A cross-cultural linguistic study. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (5 th ed.). (21). UK: Longman. Munday, J. (28). Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications (2 nd ed.). Abingdon, England: Routledge. Nida, E. (1964). Toward a science of translating: With special reference to principles and procedures involved in Bible translation. E.J. Brill, Leiden: Netherlands. 6

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