Exploring the Language Landscapes: Adapting Dora to English-Spanish and Hindi-English Setting

Abstract The study examines the cultural adaptation and translation strategies employed in the children's television program Dora the Explorer by comparing an episode, “El Día de Las Madres”. The paper investigates by comparing the original English-Spanish version with its Hindi-English dubbed counterpart. The analysis delves into how the Hindi version adapts the original bilingual content featuring English and Spanish to fit the linguistic and cultural context of a Hindi-speaking audience. The show is considered a cultural text, and the deviation from the source culture is also analysed through the study. The study tries to locate the translation strategies such as preservation, substitution, localisation, and omission and later close reads the strategy using Venuti’s domestication vs. foreignisation theory to interpret them. The paper reveals broader trends in globalising children’s media and the implications of these strategies for language learning and cultural representation. Keywords: translation strategies, bilingualism, cultural identity, language learning, and bilingual programming.