The Transfer of Culture-Specific Items in Subtitling

Subtitling culture-specific items is considered challenging to translators since they are grounded in a specific source culture and audience. In this connection, Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) is a well-known organization that presents influential speeches or talks about different topics such as science, health, culture, and others. These talks are subtitled in different languages including Arabic. Therefore, the equivalence of culture-specific items in TED talks requires a deep understanding of the source and target languages and cultures. In light of this, the present study sheds light on the intersection between culture and subtitling manifested through the equivalence of culture-specific items in the subtitled TED talks from English into Arabic along with the position of the subtitler in this transfer. To this end, quantitative qualitative methods are adopted to measure and analyse the selected culture-specific items cultural aspects are selected by applying Diaz Cintas and Remael’s [9] cultural classifications and Pedersen’s [33] and Baker’s [4] translation strategies. The findings of the study show that direct translation and retention are the most deployed translation strategies whereas cultural substitution, paraphrase, and official equivalent are the least deployed strategies in the selected TED talks. The findings further contribute to understanding the relationship between the implemented translation strategies and the subtitling guidelines of the TED organization.