Transadapting the Cultural Realia of Soviet Russia to an Arab Audience: The Case of the Film Утомленные Солнцем (Burnt by the Sun)

Since the advent of the cinema, films started playing an important role in promoting knowledge about different countries and peoples. Taking the film Утомленные Солнцем (Burnt by the Sun) as a case study, the authors aim to describe translation strategies for transadapting cultural realia in their own Arabic dubbing script, and to look at them from the perspective of the translation norms that are operational in the Arab society. For the analysis of strategies of transadapting cultural realia into Arabic, the researchers use the taxonomy developed by Pedersen. They also employ the concept of norms by Toury since these norms take into account cultural and social constraints of the community, which have an impact on the translator’s choices. The results of the study show that mostly source text-oriented strategies were used for transadapting the Soviet Russia cultural realia, with the exception of the realia belonging to the category of linguistic culture. It is true, however, that the norms operating in the Arab society and the constraints of the dubbing and subtitling modes can impact the translator’s choice to a large extent.