Analysis of subtitling of the movie Gladiator on the basis of Venuti’s domestications and foreignization theory

Concerning film, TV and video subtitling, countries in the media world can be broadly subcategorized into two distinct blocks, namely, (i) subtitled countries, i.e. English-speaking countries and (ii) subtitling countries, i.e. non-English-speaking countries (Gottlieb, 1997). Subtitling practices always face with inequalities in this major media context. The present study investigates the rate and distribution of the culture-bound terms postulated by Davis (2003) and also another two techniques hypothesized by Venuti (1995) as domestication and foreignization which are presented in the subtitles of the movie Gladiator (2000) rendered from English to Persian. This analysis starts from the hypotheses that (i) in subtitling of Gladiator foreignization and word by word or literal translation have been implemented, and (ii) cultural-specific elements are distributed and used in the frames of the so-called movie based on Davis' (2003) categorization. The results obtained point to a tendency towards exclusion of the culture-bound terms in the Farsi subtitles of the film. Another tendency is observed in the subtitles in the case of foreignization instead of domestication.

کلیدواژه ها:

subtitling ، domesticating vs. foreignizing strategies ، culture-bound items in translation