Practical Approaches to English/Arabic Audiovisual Translation

Abstract

This article aims to establish the factors that the translator needs to be aware of in audiovisual translation (AVT) and to show when, how and in what context to mediate in this domain. The article is divided into two parts: The first part discusses what AVT is and shows the fundamental difference between two of its main components: voice-overs and subtitles along with similar aspects particularly in voice-over target text to those in simultaneous interpreting. This difference is either overlooked or misunderstood by theorists in the audiovisual field. The second part of the article shows what the translator might do when presented with audiovisual source text (ST) material that has some factual or logical errors which would inevitably reflect badly on the producer/translator of the target text (TT), and who might be blamed for such obvious errors by the target audience, even though it is not a fault of his/hers but rather a flaw of the ST. Finally, it must be noted here that this article is written from the point of view of an academic as well as a practitioner in the field for almost two decades.