A Pragmatic Investigation of the Translation of Swearwords in Arabic-English Film Subtitling

Subtitling, which is a main type of Audiovisual translation (AVT), has only recently received considerable interest in the field studies. As far as Arabic language concerned, most studies have been conducted to discuss several problems subtitling English multimedia material including films into by amateur or professional subtitlers, while few carried out investigate English, especially problem translating swearwords on screen. Swearwords are culturally laden expressions and therefore pose challenge film subtitlers who deal with variety such different contexts. In an endeavour address this gap that area AVT, study attempts one culture-specific Arabic-English subtitling, namely swearwords. To achieve goal, corpus consisting three subtitled Egyptian TV channel was collected these culture-bound expressions. The analysis data utilising Baker’s model pragmatic equivalence. framework, sheds light strategies used render results show source (SL) either toned down using euphemistic completely omitted target (TL) due ideological cultural considerations. Moreover, reveals some SL pragmatically translated their equivalents TL, others do not same equivalents. Keywords: Subtitling; Translation; Swearwords; Pragmatics; Equivalence