Muhammad Y Gamal
UNSW, Sydney, Australia
AUDIOVISUAL CULTURE IN THE ARAB WORLD
Technological advances in the computer and telecommunication industries in the past two decades have challenged and changed the media and communication scene in the world today. The Arab world has not been isolated or sheltered from this change. New concepts and a new language have risen that deserve our immediate attention.
Translation studies in the Arab world today are being challenged: increasingly the medium has become poly-semiotic, the scope multidisciplinary and the audience a lot younger. Where ever one looks, screens are everywhere; beaming information, instructions and entertainment. Screens are slowly replacing pages for the authoritative, instant and accessible source of both information and entertainment.
The digital revolution has brought with it Infotainment which is fast becoming a concept influencing how people see and seek information and entertainment. Within Arab society, this concept has far reaching consequences socially, educationally and economically as it affects a large section of society who is fascinated by the charm of digital technology.
However, there is a new factor. The consumers, this time, are different: they are younger (40% under the age of 15), they speak Arabic with many Anglo words, and they write in colloquial Arabic, they are glued not to television but to digitalia: everything digital that comes with a screen from mobile phones, to Wii games and from PDAs to ADSL Internet.
Gamal(2007) highlighted the challenges facing the Arab world in the new digital age. He lists several challenges : illiteracy, low internet use, foreign language deficiency, over-reliance on English, lack of training in AVT (Audiovisual translation), poor subtitling at all levels, and the lack of research in the design and delivery of poly-semiotic translation (from films, to TV drama, children cartoons, documentaries and dubbed TV soaps).
The concept of infotainment is rapidly taking root in the Arab world. However, the paper will argue, that without proper research in the relation between language and technology there will be a great schism between the info-rich and the info poor within the Arab society. The paper will introduce the concept of AVT as a discipline sui generis and will give examples of its many applications.
The audio-visual scene in Arabic is a in a state of flux. (Gamal: 2004, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007) Translation which is traditionally mono-dimensional concerned with the written text has not been able to cope with the poly-semiotic nature of audiovisual material. The quality of translation on Arab channels, on Arab DVDs and on state-run TV channels leaves so much to be desired. In the entire Arab world today there are only two centres that offer training in screen translation. Moreover, audiovisual translation has been conspicuously absent at translation conferences in the Arab world. This has serious consequences both domestically and internationally.
The paper will argue that AVT training is highly relevant as the Arab and Muslim worlds must engage more with the outside world. Despite continued pressure and the prevailing culture of mistrust more translation must be done, more dialogue carried out and more filmssubtitled. The onus is now on the Arab world, more than ever before, to present itself to the international community in a language it understands. To do so, all the poly-semiotic levels of communication must be engaged and mastered.
References:
Gamal, M. (2004) “ Al 3arab da3ou fil tarjamah” (Arabs lost in Translation) . In Weghat Nazar Magazine. October 2004. Cairo.
Gamal, M. (2005) Unpublished study on viewer perception of subtitling in Arabic. The study was carried out during the doctoral research at the University of New South Wales.
Gamal, M. (2006a) “Omar Sharif Abroad: challenges of subtitling”. In the Book of Abstracts of the Languages and Media Conference, Berlin October 2006.
Gamal, M. (2006b) “ La cinema 3alamiya bidoon tarjamah 3alamiyah”( No international cinema without quality subtitling). Weghat Nazar Magazine. December 2006. Cairo.
Gamal, M.(2007) “AVT in the Arab World: a changing scene”. TWQ. Vol.3.2. Melbourne.
Biographical Note:
Muhammad Y Gamal is an applied linguist with 30 year-experience in a broad range of translation/interpreting tasks ranging from freelance practice to team translation, teaching, the United Nations, court interpreting, forensic linguistics, subtitling and academic research. He holds qualifications in languages, translation, Egyptology, applied linguistics and translation studies from universities in Egypt, Australia and the United States. In his doctoral research Muhammad examined the subtitling of Omar Sharif Arabic films into English. Originally from Alexandria, Egypt, Muhammad has been living in Australia since the early eighties and has been a visiting lecturer at universities in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Japan and Holland.
In April 2006, the United Nations offered him a Senior Interpreter position to work for the Iraqi Government in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Having discussed the offer with family and friends he decided against the prestigious offer.
Currently he is a Senior Arabic Linguist working for the Australian Government.
He can be reached at <>