Korean audiovisual contents are spread widely across the Arab world through the popularity of Hallyu. However, most of the Arabic subtitles in Korean movies or dramas are translated from English version. Given the lack of research into Arabic subtitling of Korean films and the fact that most of these Arabic subtitles are produced unofficially through fansubbing websites or Youtube, the present study aimed to shed light on direct and indirect subtitling of Korean films and review translation strategies adopted in both texts.
The method of analysis used in this research is text analysis between direct and indirect subtitling focusing on translation strategies. It begins with the class shits which contains interjection, verb, noun, and adverbs. The structural shifts contains the division and combination of sentences and conceptual shifts is divided into generalization, specification, substitution, and neutralization. Style shift contains the way of translating marked expressions, mood changes, and polarity.
The results of the study show that direct and indirect translations share commonalities and differences. The most frequently used strategy adopted in translating interjection was “omission” in direct and indirect translation. Both of the direct and indirect subtitling gave first priority to the strategy of “functional equivalence” in translating marked expressions. But direct subtitling adopted “liteal translation” and indirect subtitling adopted “substitution” as the second place. These results indicate that direct subtitling followed way of source-text orientation where source text items are mostly maintained in all language units. However, indirect subtitling followed a target-text oriented way of translation.
The category of mistranslation varied from misunderstandings of English idioms, vocabulary, sentences, and errors in Arabic grammar. Indirect translations are linked to the translation strategies of English, the medium language. The indirect translator’s level of English greatly affected the resulting Arabic translation. Concretely it tends to simplify the linguistic and cultural characteristics of the original text by reacceptance of reduction, a major characteristic of English translation.
To deliver Korean cultural meanings and contents properly, we need to use a mix of strategies for direct and indirect translation of Korean into Arabic, which are reviewed in this research. SL oriented translation is efficient for preserving the style of the film representing the characteristics of figures and TL oriented translation can bring simpler text and higher readability.