Papers by Masood Khoshsaligheh
Languages, 2023
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Filmmakers increasingly resort to using multiple languages in their work to realistically reflect... more Filmmakers increasingly resort to using multiple languages in their work to realistically reflect today’s globalized world. However, this multiplicity poses specific challenges in the process of translation for dubbing. This study explores the rendition of Western multilingual films into Persian dubbed versions for the Iranian audience. Films as audiovisual texts have multimodal content, so both verbal and non-verbal elements were analyzed. We compared the original versions of a selection of ten multilingual films with the Persian dubbed versions based on two models of analyses (i.e., Sanz Ortega, 2011; Zabalbeascoa & Voellmer, 2014). The results reveal that the most frequently used solution for translating multilingual films at the verbal level is neutralization, which eliminates linguistic variation, and consequently, the multiplicity of languages in multilingual films is not maintained. Incidentally, a vast range of non-verbal signs is altered to conform to the socio-cultural norms of the target culture.
International Journal of Language, Culture and Society, 2022
Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling ... more Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such developments, the necessities of professional practice of subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran. In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this article presents the status quo of non-professional subtitling into Persian and introduces the specific typology of this practice in the Iranian mediascape.
Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 2021
This qualitative study investigated mediation and censorship in the Persian dubbing of a sample o... more This qualitative study investigated mediation and censorship in the Persian dubbing of a sample of American feature films broadcast on Iranian national television to get insights into the details of these gatekeeping practices in recent years. The results revealed that many verbal and nonverbal instances relating to sexuality, Christian rituals and symbols, violence, insults and profanity, out of marriage relationships, and sensitive political references were identified inappropriate and edited out in the dubbed versions on account of religious, socio-cultural, and political considerations. The achieved results of the study have immediate pedagogical applications for dubbing practitioners, translators, students, and educators.
This qualitative study is an attempt to gain insights into the competence and sub-competencies re... more This qualitative study is an attempt to gain insights into the competence and sub-competencies required for a successful English and Persian translation teacher in the context of undergraduate education in Iran. To this end, 95 senior graduate and undergraduate students of English translation and 13 experienced translation teachers in Iranian universities were invited to participate in the study. Using focus-group and in-depth interviews, two sets of qualitative data were collected and analyzed through open, axial, and selective coding procedures of Grounded Theory. According to the students, translation teaching competence includes the components of pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and psychological-personality competence, while the teachers believed in pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge, and mental-personality competence as the underlying constructs. Whereas content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge are mainly common in the views of the students and teachers, psychological-personality and mentalpersonality sub-competences are the factors which are not shared by the two groups.
Perspectives
The present study aimed to investigate the censorial interference in the Persian dubbing of the f... more The present study aimed to investigate the censorial interference in the Persian dubbing of the first four seasons of House of Cards (2013–2017) broadcast on the Iranian national television. To that end, a multi-modal comparison was made between the Persian dubbed version and the original one to find out firstly, the content considered inappropriate for public broadcasting and secondly, what cases had the potential to be censored but have been kept purposefully. Based on the results, in both visual and acoustic modes, censorship was applied to several verbal and
non-verbal issues, which were categorized into three thematic groups: religious, socio-cultural, and political. It was also found that, although a considerable number of issues were censored in this dubbed version, some issues typically censored in official dubbed films and series were kept intact for ideological and political reasons. This leniency in censorship seems to serve as an effective propaganda tool against the American government.
International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 2020
Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling ... more Given the increasing pace of dissemination of cultural content across global borders, subtitling as a cost-effective solution for rendering audiovisual programs is gaining more popularity, even in societies, which have been traditionally using dubbing as the dominant modality for foreign films and television series. Likewise, various types of subtitling practices have developed and are used in Iran both at official and non-official outlets. While official dubbing has failed in some aspect in addressing the growing interest of Iranian viewers of foreign content, a variety of non-professional subtitling has been filling the gap, and subtitling appears to be dominating the audiovisual media market. Despite such developments, the necessities of professional practice of subtitling, including standardized guidelines, codes of ethics and practice, and training, have never been realized in Iran. In the absence of a professional subtitling tradition, this article presents the status quo of non-professional subtitling into Persian and introduces the specific typology of this practice in the Iranian mediascape.
Video game localisation in Iran: a survey of users’ profile, gaming habits and preferences
The Translator , 2020
Today, an increasing number of people are playing video games, hence the continued growth of the ... more Today, an increasing number of people are playing video games, hence the continued growth of the game industry’s annual revenue, surpassing $150 billion in 2019, exceeds those of music and film industries combined. Considering the huge international market, accumulating and analysing information about gamers’ opinions, attitudes and experiences is of necessity for the game localisation market and could supplement and enrich the limited existing research findings. To address this gap, this article presents the results of a survey of Iranian console and computer gamers’ reception. Using quantitative data from over 750 gamers, the study examines the Iranian gamers’ profile, gaming habits, preferences, and perception of the present situation of video game localisation in Iran. The results reveal that the entertainment of playing video games appears to be entirely male-oriented and mostly in their teens and early to mid-20s. The most telling results suggest that Iranian gamers prefer a localisation approach in which the translation maintains the otherness of the original, and that on average, they are dissatisfied with the present state of game localisation into Persian.
Insertion or Voice-off in Rendition of Graphic Codes: An Experiment in Persian Dubbing
Visual Communication, 2019
Concerning graphic codes, there are currently three methods for their rendition in dubbing: audio... more Concerning graphic codes, there are currently three methods for their rendition in dubbing: audio-rendition of the target graphic codes (TGC) with an actor’s voice-off and adding the voice-off when the close shot is on the original graphic code (OGC); subtitling the OGC; and editing and inserting new TGCs replacing the OGCs in the film. The purpose of the current mixed-methods study was comparing the efficiency of voice-off versus insertion, two methods of rendition of graphic codes in dubbing, in terms of viewers’ comprehension and information processing. To this end, the Persian dubbed versions of Sherlock TV series broadcast on BBC Persian, using insertion method, and on Iranian official television, using voice-off, were selected. The findings of the experiment revealed that the participants experienced better information recall and comprehension of the content of the graphic codes when they were translated using the insertion method. In the qualitative phase, the retrospective interview data involved issues in terms of the genre of audiovisual material, dialogue interaction, types of graphic codes, target language cultural references, literacy and viewing ability of the audience as relevant variables in the preference of each of the two methods.
The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 2019
The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Project-based learning (PjBL) in the ... more The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of Project-based learning (PjBL) in the Iranian context in an English-Persian translation class. Therefore, a project-based translation treatment was implemented to a course on advanced translation in a class of 21 students at a university in Iran. The study qualitatively investigated how students’ attitudes toward the treatment differed before and after the treatment and how PjBL was practically implemented. The improvement of students’ critical thinking, their attitudes toward their teamwork performance, and their translation quality were quantitatively examined. The data regarding the students’ attitudes were obtained through focus group interviews before and after the treatment as well as participant observations and audio-recordings. The improvement of the students’ critical thinking abilities, their attitudes toward their teamwork performance, and their translation quality were examined through pre- and post-treatment model. The findings of the study indicated that the students’ attitudes toward the treatment were generally positive, not only before but also after the treatment, although certain challenges of applying PjBL in the Iranian context were observed. Empirical evidence indicated an improvement of the students' translation quality, some of their critical thinking abilities as well as a few of their teamwork skills.
Hikma, 2018
Compared with dubbing and subtitling research, the current literature on voice-over translation i... more Compared with dubbing and subtitling research, the current literature on voice-over translation is fairly scarce, and research has been mainly reported from Europe. Likewise, there are few reports on the topic from an Asian context including Iran. The main goal of this paper is, therefore, to examine voice-over translation in Iranian news broadcasting. The study uses a corpus of English news materials translated into Persian and have been broadcast on Iranian Television. The study has described Persian translation for voice-over from two perspectives: synchronization techniques, and faithfulness and ideology in translation. The overall findings suggest that voice-over translation is a common modality used for translation of foreign news reports in Iran, which entails considerable appropriation and manipulation due to solutions adopted for synchronization and ideological purposes of the news agency.
Resumen: En comparación con la investigación llevada a cabo en doblaje y subtitulación, la literatura disponible hasta la fecha sobre la traducción para voice-over (o voces superpuestas) es bastante escasa y los estudios existentes se centran en Europa. Del mismo modo, este tema se ha investigado poco en Asia, especialmente en el contexto iraní. El objetivo principal del presente artículo es analizar la traducción para voice-over de programas informativos en Irán. El corpus utilizado para este estudio se compone de material en inglés traducido al persa que ha sido emitido en la televisión iraní. La traducción persa para voice-over se describe aquí desde dos perspectivas distintas: técnicas de sincronización e ideología en traducción. Los resultados sugieren que la traducción para voice-over es una modalidad empleada comúnmente en la traducción de informativos
Studies about Languages, 2018
Subtitling reduction is a way of tackling subtitling constraints that can facilitate the watching... more Subtitling reduction is a way of tackling subtitling constraints that can facilitate the watching experience of the viewers. Recently, multimodal transcription has been employed by Taylor (2003, 2013) to investigate the audiovisual requirements of films as well as to investigate the possibility of editing and shortening the subtitles based on the nonverbally informed content. Since this approach has rarely been empirically examined, the current study attempted to investigate the possibility of reducing the subtitles of the French language film ‘Amelie’ (Jeunet, 2001), and the impact of so doing on the comprehension achievement and the reception of the Iranian viewers. To this aim, in an experiment, the full Persian subtitles of the film were reduced based on the said framework. Then, the comprehension achievement of the control group who watched the full subtitles was compared with that of the experimental group who were shown the reduced subtitles. Moreover, the reception of the reduced subtitles was qualitatively investigated using retrospective interviews with selected participants of the treatment group. The results of the experiment revealed no significant difference between the comprehension achievements of the two groups, indicating the adequacy of the reduced version of the subtitles. The interviews revealed mixed results, indicating that the reduced subtitles were well-received by some for their brevity, but they were also criticized by some others for their fairly negative interference with the watching flow.
Violations of research ethics including a varieties of plagiarism by students in Iran is a concer... more Violations of research ethics including a varieties of plagiarism by students in Iran is a concern which has lately called promising levels of attention as rules are updated and better enforced and more awareness is being raised. As to deal with any problem, a full understanding of its nature is necessary, the current study focused on how a sample of Iranian students construe this phenomenon. To collect the necessary data, an original questionnaire with 34 closed-ended items included the most common instances of violations of research ethics was designed. The items included were mainly varieties of plagiarism identified in the literature. The items were narrowed down with reference to the qualitative data from focus group interviews with a purposive sample of Iranian graduate students. In the main phase of the study, using the questionnaire, quantitative data were obtained from the responses of 274 graduate students of translation studying in various Iranian universities. The findings revealed the participants did not have a fully accurate perception and appreciation of research ethics violation as they failed to distinguish ethically acceptable from unethical conducts. The contributing sample showed indifference to most ethical issues in scholarly publication. Translating a text and presenting it as one's own in addition to text recycling were identified as the most severe instances perceived. The types, fraudulence, unacknowledged use, duplicate publication, misreferencing, excessive overuse were perceived the most severe to the least severe according to the sample. The typology and the findings on the severity of the types and instances were recommended to be used as an empirically supported guideline for curriculum design of academic writing courses in graduate programs in Iranian universities or similar contexts.
SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 2019
The current study explored indications to the various dimensions of emotional intelligence (EI) o... more The current study explored indications to the various dimensions of emotional intelligence (EI) of eminent contemporary Iranian literary translators to contribute to a gap in the barely investigated area of Translator Studies in the Iranian context. To this end, using secondary qualitative data, the study analyzed a purposive sample of published interviews with select celebrated contemporary Iranian literary translators. The results revealed various indications to all the EI factors, yet the descriptive results showed that none of the four factors stood out as substantially more or less evident. Nevertheless, the several facets under each of the EI factors were shown to be more diversely evident and variously manifested. The facets of Self-esteem, under Well-being factor; Self-motivation, under Sociability factor; and assertiveness, under Sociability factor had the highest frequency of indications in the data. Within a descriptive paradigm, the achieved insights into the EI state of the eminent Iranian literary translators are discussed in the light of the related literature.
inTRAlinea, 2019
Dar al-Tarjome Naseri [Naseri House of Translation] was the first state translation institution e... more Dar al-Tarjome Naseri [Naseri House of Translation] was the first state translation institution established at the time of Naser al-Din Shah, the fourth king of Qajar in Iran. This institution was managed by Mohammad Hassan Khan Etemad al-Saltane, the Shah’s special translator and interpreter and later his minister of Press and Publishing. He was the second key figure after the Shah, whose decisions over translation issues influenced publication in Iran. Known for being a despotic ruler, Naser al-Din Shah would not allow the translation and publication of any material without his approval at Dar al-Tarjome Naseri. This situation led to a translation movement outside the court and even outside Iran which pursued aims different from and even opposing to those of the state translation institution. The aim of this study is twofold: to describe the role translation played in and outside Naseri Translation House, which resulted in two translation movements, and to show how translation led to Naser al-Din Shah’s “new” form of despotism. To this end, the authors have examined the related sources including the books translated in and outside this institution and the translators' prefaces as well as Etemad al-Saltane's diary. The analysis of the documents studied shows that, not only did Dar al-Tarjome Naseri feed Naser al-Din Shah’s despotism, but also it acted as a criterion for translators outside Dar al-Tarjome to translate books which paved the way for the Constitutional Revolution to happen.
Observatorio, 2019
Although dubbing is the official and dominant modality of translating foreign films and televisio... more Although dubbing is the official and dominant modality of translating foreign films and television series in Iran, amateur subtitling has been increasingly used by the Iranian audience for audiovisual products that are not dubbed, or at least not soon enough or not without substantial 'cultural appropriation.' Given the increasing attention paid to viewers' reception in the domain of audiovisual translation, this study attempts to explore the reception of Iranian viewers of the non-professional subtitling into Persian. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed for the present research. Initially, the qualitative analysis of the focus groups conducted with consumers of such products suggested five main themes: translational, translatorial and technical expectations as well as the advantages and disadvantages. The quantitative analysis of the survey data confirmed the five themes in the second phase of the study.
Mutatis Mutandis, 2019
The number of studies addressing non-professional or amateur subtitling or fansubbing has increas... more The number of studies addressing non-professional or amateur subtitling or fansubbing has increasingly multiplied over the past years, underlying its relevance in the present world. This is partly because a growing number of audiences worldwide now watch TV series and films with subtitles by amateur subtitlers, which are freely shared online, and Iranian viewers are certainly included. In Iran, to get around the "cultural gate-keeping" policy advocated and strictly enforced by the state in the national media system, from the early 2010s onward, numerous Persian-language websites have embarked on a new initiative whereby original, especially American tv series and films are made available for download together with their Persian subtitles. Despite the upsurge of this phenomenon in the Iranian context, there is limited literature and research on Persian non-professional subtitling. To fill this knowledge gap, this article aims to examine and analyze the different practices that are closely associated with Persian amateur subtitling. This includes building a profile of Iranian amateur subtitlers, along with an account of their working process, followed by a description of fansubbed products. The data are gathered using an open-ended questionnaire with a criterion sample of Iranian non-professional subtitlers, a survey of Iran-based video and subtitle sharing websites, and a close examination of the common features found in fansubbed Persian products, including reading speed and fansubbers' experimentation with the original. El sistema de subtitulación aficionada iraní: Una investigación cualitativa Resumen La cantidad de estudios que abordan la subtitulación no profesional o aficionada, o fansubbing, se ha multi-plicado en los últimos años, lo que subraya su relevancia en el mundo actual. Esto se debe en parte a que un número creciente de espectadores en todo el mundo ahora ve series de televisión y películas con subtítulos compartidos en línea por subtituladores no profesionales e Irán no es una excepción. Desde principios de 2010 en adelante, en Irán, numerosos sitios web en lengua persa se han embarcado en una nueva iniciativa para 1 This article has its basis on the project "An Empirical Investigation into Persian Non-professional Subtitling", endorsed by the Faculty of Letters and Humanities at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad.
Translation & Interpreting, 2018
The purpose of this research was to examine the relevance of emotioncy in Persian dubbing prefere... more The purpose of this research was to examine the relevance of emotioncy in Persian dubbing preference. Emotioncy deals with sense-induced emotions which can change individuals' interpretation. Approximately two hundred Iranian native speakers of Persian were asked to participate in the study and complete two instruments after viewing five pairs of dubbed segments into Persian. After the originally-designed instruments, emotioncy and dubbing lexical preference scales, had been confirmed for their construct validity using Rasch analyses, structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to examine the relationship between emotioncy and dubbing lexical preference on the part of the participants who viewed dubbed segments. The analyses revealed that the viewers in this study found a dubbed foreign audiovisual text which contains higher emotioncy lexical items more preferable. This quantitative study recommends supplementary qualitative studies as well as the replication of this design in other language combinations and other modalities of audiovisual translation to complement the findings of this research.
For more than seven decades, dubbing has been the dominant professional modality for overcoming l... more For more than seven decades, dubbing has been the dominant professional modality for overcoming language barriers in foreign movies and TV series in Iran and has been revered as a national art. Although limited, some recent work has explored Persian dubbing reception and to continue this endeavor, this study attempts to offer further insights into how the Iranian viewers perceive dubbing, translation for dubbing and what they expect from dubbing. More precisely, the study aims at examining how the Iranian audiences view dubbing and particularly its agents and translation. To these ends, a questionnaire including open and closed items was designed. The overall results revealed that translation quality was considered considerably less important than the technical issues related to the dubbing production, such as voice-acting and synchronization. The findings also suggested that the performance of dubbing actors and dubbing directors was regarded more important than the contribution of translators. Overall, these findings seemed to indicate that the Iranian viewers' appreciation of a dubbed program is mainly guided by non-translation issues including the performance of the dubbing actors and the accuracy of the relevant synchronizations.
This qualitative research set out to describe translation of video games into Persian from a non-... more This qualitative research set out to describe translation of video games into Persian from a non-professional translation lens. The study examined the translation and subtitling of cut-scenes in a fan-video recording of the game Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. These cut-scenes were non-professionally subtitled and uploaded on Aparat.com to share with other Persian-speaking gamers. Initially, the paper presents the key literature on game localization and describes the status quo video games in Iran and non-professional translation. In the next section, the collected data were presented and analyzed at two levels of macro and micro. The interview results of the macro-level revealed the subtitler’s background information, aims and motivations. At the micro-level, the non-professional Persian subtitles of a five-hour video recording were analyzed in terms of translator’s visibility and agency as well as technical and linguistic issues. The findings suggested that the aim of this novice subtitler for volunteering to render the cut-scenes into Persian was to improve his command of English language and to enjoy himself in gaming. In other words, he was seeking cultural in addition to symbolic capital. Other results suggested the visibility and presence of the subtitler in the translation through the frequent use of glosses and explanations. Analysis of the subtitles at textual and technical levels showed that in multiple cases the generally recommended regulations in terms of time and space related constraints were not respected and mistranslation of idioms was frequent.
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Papers by Masood Khoshsaligheh
non-verbal issues, which were categorized into three thematic groups: religious, socio-cultural, and political. It was also found that, although a considerable number of issues were censored in this dubbed version, some issues typically censored in official dubbed films and series were kept intact for ideological and political reasons. This leniency in censorship seems to serve as an effective propaganda tool against the American government.
Resumen: En comparación con la investigación llevada a cabo en doblaje y subtitulación, la literatura disponible hasta la fecha sobre la traducción para voice-over (o voces superpuestas) es bastante escasa y los estudios existentes se centran en Europa. Del mismo modo, este tema se ha investigado poco en Asia, especialmente en el contexto iraní. El objetivo principal del presente artículo es analizar la traducción para voice-over de programas informativos en Irán. El corpus utilizado para este estudio se compone de material en inglés traducido al persa que ha sido emitido en la televisión iraní. La traducción persa para voice-over se describe aquí desde dos perspectivas distintas: técnicas de sincronización e ideología en traducción. Los resultados sugieren que la traducción para voice-over es una modalidad empleada comúnmente en la traducción de informativos