Lexical Translation in Movies: A Comparative Analysis of Persian Dubs and Subtitles through CDA

Abstract

There are two major types of film translation: dubbing and subtitling; each of them interferes with the original were discussed text to a different extent. On one hand, dubbing known to be the method that modifies the source text largely and thus makes it familiar to the target audience through domestication. The impact of translated movies has already been emphasized by quiet a number of researchers. The present study aimed to investigate the strategies of the Iranian subtitlers and dubbers of English movies in rendering English words. To this aim, three theoretical frameworks were employed: the strategies proposed by Venuti, and Newmark's classification used first by researcher and then, researcher went back to the Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), in the part dominance. The aim was to find which strategies were the most prevalently used by Iranian subtitlers and dubbers and to see which model fitted these attempts the best. A movie was investigated: the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Through a qualitative content analysis, distribution of strategies was found and reported in frequencies and percentages. They were crossed – compared between the three frameworks. The result showed that which strategies of each model were used more. The results of this study may pave the way for future research in literary translation and help translation instructors and translation trainees as well in translation classes.