Arabic Subtitling of Cultural References in Netflix’s Wednesday: A Case Study at the Islamic University of Lebanon

Abstract

This qualitative study investigates how third-year translation students at the Islamic University of Lebanon (IUL) deal with the subtitling of extralinguistic cultural references (ECRs) from English into Arabic, the target language (TL). Given the multimodal and culturally dense nature of audiovisual translation (AVT), subtitling poses unique challenges, particularly under strict temporal and spatial constraints. Fourteen participants translated 10 selected extracts from the Netflix series Wednesday and 5 of them were individually interviewed. The research utilizes Pedersen’s (2011) taxonomy to analyze translation strategies and Pedersen’s (2017) Functional Equivalence, Acceptability, Readability (FAR) model to assess subtitle quality. Thematic coding was also applied to analyze the interview data and identify common difficulties students encountered during the translation task. Findings reveal a predominant use of substitution, generalization, direct translation, and specification strategies, with frequent semantic, stylistic, and grammatical errors. The study highlights the students’ struggles related to cultural awareness, idiomatic expressions, technical subtitling constraints, and limited AVT training. These challenges underscore the necessity for integrating comprehensive AVT pedagogy within translation curricula, emphasizing practical exercises and cultural competence to prepare students for real-world audiovisual subtitling tasks. The results contribute to the broader understanding of subtitle translation in Arabic and offer pedagogical insights for enhancing translation education in culturally complex audiovisual contexts.