Hassan Soodmand Afshar; Alireza Sohrabi
Abstract
This study critically evaluated the newly published Iranian twelfth-grade English textbook, Vision 3, with a focus on ‘rights analysis’ and ‘culture’ adopting a mixed-methods design. To this end, 200 Iranian school English teachers and 200 twelfth-grade students were selected ...
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This study critically evaluated the newly published Iranian twelfth-grade English textbook, Vision 3, with a focus on ‘rights analysis’ and ‘culture’ adopting a mixed-methods design. To this end, 200 Iranian school English teachers and 200 twelfth-grade students were selected nation-wide from various Iranian high schools based on convenience sampling. The participants (both male and female) completed a validated 56-item researcher-made questionnaire both online and in the paper format. Moreover, 15 teachers and 15 students, whose informed consent was obtained, attended a semi-structured interview voluntarily. The participants’ rights and needs as well as the cultural aspects of the book were also analyzed subjectively by the researchers. The results of the descriptive statistics of the questionnaire and the content analysis of the interviews showed that despite the authors’ claim that the book enjoyed a mainly communicative approach in its design and preparation, the Vision 3 package has serious shortcomings, including failure to take into account the students’ needs, the negligence of the rights of the teachers and students in the process of designing and compiling the book, following a producer-consumer attitude in developing the materials, ignoring the equal distribution of power, and pursuing an extreme localization and Iranianization of the target language culture. Therefore, it is recommended that policymakers consider both teachers and students’ viewpoints to overcome these drawbacks in future editions of the book.
Abbas Emam
Abstract
1. Introduction Since the late 1990s, the world has been experiencing a gradual involvement into an emerging trend of translation-related activities; a transition from “translation” and “interpretation” towards “media translation”. This has been a period characterized ...
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1. Introduction Since the late 1990s, the world has been experiencing a gradual involvement into an emerging trend of translation-related activities; a transition from “translation” and “interpretation” towards “media translation”. This has been a period characterized by an ever-increasing momentum in dubbing, voice- over, subtitling, etc. with regard to a multitude number of movies, TV series, documentaries, multi-media factoids, and the like. These obviously require domestication/deforeignization of the materials. According to Venuti (1995, p. 20)“domestication” is defined as “an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target language cultural values, bringing the author back home”. Thus, domestication involves some sort of manipulation in a foreign text aimed at reproducing it to serve the recipient language and culture. Recent sources on the issue too appear to comply with this perspective(Ramieri,2006; Tymoczko,1995; Ulrych,2000).American directors were in fact among the first to elaborate on issues related to the linguistic barriers confronting movie productions, as well as the challenges involved in dubbing animated cartoons(Chiaro,2009), later to be followed by linguists and researchers into translation studies(Denton &Ciampi,2012). Helgren(2007),for one, did research on allusions used in the animated cartoon The Simpsons. Another researcher, Gall(2012) carried out a comparative study on the original English version of Chicken Runversus its Romanian and Hungarian versions. Bruzdziak(2009) too highlighted the conceptual changes taken place in translating verbal expressions in Shrek in its Polish dubbing. A number of animated cartoons were also analyzed by Burczynska(2012). The same research line was followed by Song(2012), and Nachkebia(2012). In Iran, however, to the best knowledge of the present researcher ,only a very few articles and still fewer theses have so far been devoted to such an emerging field of inquiry: the first, a study by Qumi (2009),the second, a thesis by Javadi(2010), and the third by Jamalimanesh, Fatholallahiand Rahkhoda(2010).2. MethodologyWith an eye on domestication literature in translation studies (e.g.,Ramieri,2006; Ulrych,2000; Venuti,1995), in this study we intend to show in what ways and to what extent domesticating techniques are used by Iranians involved in the dubbing industry. A classification of eight techniques is also offered. Two research questions are formulated: one, dealing with the identification of the overall domestication techniques being adopted, and the second ,with the identification of the most frequent ones. To this end, three Persian dubbed animated cartoons Barnyard, Panda Kung Fu, and Hoodwinked were selected. Their original English version scripts were obtained from the relevant online sources. Later on, each of the English vs. Persian version pairs was independently compared and contrasted to arrive at a list of the most frequent techniques employed in Iranian animated cartoons.3. DiscussionThe data revealed that Iranian translating/dubbing agents tend to adopt a technique from among the eight ones specified below to domesticate and/or deforeignize non-Iranian animated cartoons:1. Substituting original English foods and drinks with Iranian ones2. Substituting original English dialects with Iranian social/geographical ones 3. Substituting original English non-idiomatic expressions with idiomatic Persian expressions4. Substituting original English non-idiomatic expressions with Persian neologistic slang expressions5. Substituting original English idioms with Persian slang expressions6. Substituting original English songs/lyrics with Iranian folk songs or contemporary lyrics7. Adding linguistic elements with no counterparts in the original English script8. Omitting particular cultural and/or linguistic elements from the original English scriptThe results of the present study revealed that in Iran, by and large, translation and/or dubbing of the English animated cartoons are done in ways, giving the impression as if the original English scripts were written in Persian.4. ConclusionIt could be claimed that Iranian translators of English animated cartoons tend to manipulate western English original scripts in ways which facilitate maximal domestication / Iranization of the materials to make the plot more believable and native-like. That is typically crystallized by making use of as many instances of Persian idioms ,slang ,colloquial expressions, as well as proverbs ,as possible. The findings of this study are likely to comply with “skopos” as suggested by Vermeer(1984/2004). On the other hand, it might be argued that the translation and dubbing of the above movies are so carefully done that their Iranian Persian-speaking viewers could hardly sense the “presence” and /or “visibility” of the translators.
