Dubbing feminist discourse in Disney films for Arab audiences: Frozen as a case study

ABSTRACT

This paper examines gender representation and feminist discourses in Disney’s animated film translation into Arabic. It uses Walt Disney’s Frozen (2013) and its dubbing into Modern Standard Arabic as the case study. The comparative analysis utilizes register analysis of both the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) in order to examine the discrepancies found in the dubbed version leading to the assessment of the quality of translation into Arabic. Relying on textual analysis that relates to a wider socio-cultural framework, the paper suggests that dubbing is a powerful tool that influences conceptions of gender relations within a society and can resist the female’s authoritative voice.

KEYWORDS:

• Audiovisual translation
• Disney
• dubbing
• feminist discourse
• register analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 MSA is the form of Arabic mainly used for formal written correspondences, literary texts, news articles, and religious and political sermons.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samia Bazzi

Samia Bazzi is Professor of Translation and Linguistics at the Lebanese University. Her research interests are within the field of translation and politics, journalistic translation, and cultural studies. Her key publications include Arab News and Conflict (John Benjamins, 2009). Bazzi is a member of different academic research boards, including inTRAlinea.