The patriarchal legal system and the socio-cultural institutions of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) relegate Iranian women to second-class citizens. Yet, Canadian feminist texts such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985) and Carol Shields's Unless (2002) have been translated into Persian, in 2003 and 2005 respectively. Moreover, they circulate freely and are found in Iran’s National Library. This seeming discrepancy needs a systemic and contextually-based explanation. Four questions guide my dissertation: What happens to the texts as they cross the cultural boundaries into the receiving society? Specifically, which features of feminist texts are most vulnerable to censorial interventions and what does that reveal about the interplay of the hegemonic theocratic-patriarchy and translation? Finally, how is the Persian translation of feminist texts even possible, given Iran’s legal, political and socio-cultural antagonism toward women’s autonomy? In other words, what factors mitigate such translations? To answer these questions, I outline the legal representation of women in the legal discourse and the socio-cultural attitudes towards women’s rights in Iran subsequent to the (1906-1911) Constitutional Revolution and the 1979 Revolution, which led to an Islamist government. I examine the impacts of the IRI’s androcentric legislations on women’s rights, and the censorship mechanisms on Persian and imported feminist literature. I explore the types and extent of resistance to censorship, and I study the representation of women in school textbooks, cinema and Persian literature to analyze the impact that the interaction between the legal discourse, censorship and resistance has on cultural products. I conduct a comparative text analysis using theories of feminist linguistics and descriptive translation studies (Toury 1995; Cameron 1985, 1995) to investigate the extent to which patriarchal mechanisms influence the translation of the two novels. The goal is to determine how the legal and socio-cultural discourses of the target society affect the form and meaning of the translation, and to identify translation strategies that undermine the very features that make a novel female-centric. I demonstrate how these translation strategies consistently produce target texts that conform to the state-sponsored patriarchal agenda, and synchronize with the gender values and norms of the IRI.

Hierdie studie handel oor die Engelse onderskrifte in Afrikaanse televisieprogramme oor verskillende genres. Dit ondersoek die verskynsels asook die gehalte in en van die intertalige onderskrifte. Dit is _ vergelykende teksstudie met die doel om aanbevelings vir verbeterde onderskrifte te gee. Daar word _ deeglike literatuurstudie gedoen om agtergrond vir die navorsing te skep. Die data word ingesamel en gekategoriseer om geanaliseer te word sodat ingeligte gevolgtrekkings gemaak kan word. Daar is bevind dat die Afrikaanse televisieprogramme wat ondersoek is, substandaard Engelse onderskrifte het en dat die meeste foute is as gevolg van die minagting van die onderskrifskeppingsreëls. Die verhandeling sluit af deur aanbevelings te maak oor hoe dit verbeter kan word. / This study considers English subtitles in Afrikaans television programs in different genres. It researches the phenomena, as well as the standard of the interlingual subtitles. It is a comparative text study and has the goal of creating recommendations for better subtitles. A thorough literature study was done to provide background for the coming research. The data was collected and categorised to be analysed to reach an informed conclusion. The study found that the researched Afrikaans television programs have substandard subtitles and that the most mistakes were because of ignoring the subtitling rules. The dissertation concludes by making suggestions on how to better it. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Afrikaans / MA / Unrestricted

Music videos have been published on YouTube since the site’s creation in 2005. However, on-demand subtitles for music videos are a relatively recent phenomenon. As fans can now understand lyrics in a language that is not their own, by using translated subtitles, artists have the possibility of reaching a wider international audience than ever. This qualitative study aims to fill a gap in translation studies by examining the translation of French song lyrics into English in the subtitles of music videos on YouTube. The study poses the following questions: how are specific linguistic features that are characteristic of song lyrics translated in the subtitles of music videos? What is the overall effect of these translations – is there a loss of meaning or of style once the lyrics have been translated? What are the particularities of this medium of translation?  The corpus consists of 14 music videos published on YouTube within the last decade. All 14 pop/hip-hop songs examined are performed in French and subtitled in English. The study gives an overview of the translation techniques used in the English subtitles on French music videos, by examining both the methods used to translate songs as well as the strategies used by subtitlers to translate specific linguistic features. The linguistic features examined through comparative text analysis are phonetic (assonance, alliteration, rhyme, and language play), socio-cultural (linguistic register, cultural references, and idiomatic expressions including slang), and grammatical.  This thesis begins with an interrogation of previous research on audiovisual and song translation, including an examination of taxonomies of subtitling strategies. These taxonomies are applied to the under-examined context of YouTube music videos, following the paradigm of Descriptive Translation Studies.  Through a descriptive analysis of the pairs of source-language and target-language linguistic features, the study found that translation strategies were varied, and could result in a tension between the prioritisation of stylistic elements over the original meaning of the lyrics. The results confirmed a lack of standardised conventions for subtitled translations on YouTube, and certain markers of this digital, community-oriented medium were present, where they might not be found in more conventional arenas of audiovisual translation.