Subtitling Islamic Cultural Items: A Cross-Genre Analysis of Arabic Films Subtitled into English

Abstract

This study investigates the applicability of Al-Shlool's (2023) taxonomy of subtitling strategies for Islamic cultural items (ICIs) across various film genres beyond documentaries. The taxonomy, which includes nine strategies—loan, literal translation, substitution, transposition, addition, compensation, dummy compensation, omission, and condensation—has been applied exclusively to Arabic documentary films subtitled into English. To expand the scope of this taxonomy, the study examines ICIs in drama, comedy, and action films. A corpus of 15 films (five from each genre), subtitled into English and available on major video-on-demand platforms, was analysed. The study specifically addresses the density of ICIs in the source text (DST), genre-specific patterns in DST, and the subtitling strategies used and evaluates the effectiveness of Al-Shlool's taxonomy in reflecting cultural nuances across these genres. The findings highlight how genre influences the selection of subtitling strategies, offering valuable insights into the broader applicability of the taxonomy. This research contributes to the field of audiovisual translation by exploring the genre-specific challenges of preserving cultural meaning and ensuring linguistic accuracy in subtitling.