Audiovisual English-Arabic Translation: De Beaugrande's Perspective

Abstract

This paper attempts to demonstrate the significance of the seven standards of textuality with special application to audiovisual English Arabic translation. Ample and thoroughly analysed examples have been provided to help in audiovisual English-Arabic translation decision-making. A text is meaningful if and only if it carries meaning and knowledge to its audience, and is optimally activatable, recoverable and accessible. The same is equally applicable to audiovisual translation (AVT). The latter should also carry knowledge which can be easily accessed by the TL audience, and be processed with least energy and time, i.e. achieving the utmost level of efficiency. Communication occurs only when that text is coherent, with continuity of senses and concepts that are appropriately linked. Coherence of a text will be achieved when all aspects of cohesive devices are well accounted for pragmatically. This combined with a good amount of psycholinguistic element will provide a text with optimal communicative value. Non-text is certainly devoid of such components and ultimately non-communicative. Communicative knowledge can be classified into three categories: determinate knowledge, typical knowledge and accidental knowledge. To create dramatic suspense and the element of surprise, the text in AV environment, as in any dialogue, often carries accidental knowledge. This unusual knowledge aims to make AV material interesting in the eyes of its audience. That cognitive environment is enhanced by an adequate employment of material (picture and sound), and helps to recover sense in the text. Hence, the premise of this paper is the application of certain aspects of these standards to AV texts taken from various recent feature films and documentaries, in order to facilitate the translating process and produce a final appropriate product.