Preserving Style in Translating Entertainment of Walt-Disney’s Tangled: English to Egyptian Arabic Dialect

Abstract

This study investigates the entertaining stylistic features of Walt-Disney’s Tangled into the Arabic Egyptian dialect and whether the Egyptian dialect retained the same stylistic entertaining features as the source text does. It also shows which literary method translators used to communicate with target language readers (audience) in translating entertainment. The study presents concepts related to humor and entertainment translation and the communicative translation style. This study also introduces some of the techniques for appropriate entertainment translation. The translators try their best to reproduce the image in the TT (target text) as closely as possible to the source text; therefore, it is important to retain the entertaining movie style in the translation. Semantic translation cannot solely help TT readers understand the source text; the translator should try to find an appropriate equivalence rather than identity. As a result, translating style is crucial for target readers. The study measures which is of the Arabic variants more humorous and entertaining in translating Walt Disney’s comic movie. Consequently, a questionnaire is designed based on the translation and the stylistics’ views of Spencer, Enkvist, and Gregory (1964); Haas (1973); Bani Abdo (2017); Haynes (2015); O'Neill (1992); and Minghe (2013). The quantitative questionnaire method is used to make an evaluation comparison between the comic source text style and the dubbed Egyptian dialect along with the Standard Arabic counterparts. The study concludes that Egyptian Arabic is more humorous and funnier to translate Walt Disney’s comic Tangled movie for Jordanian population of different age, gender, and backgrounds with percentages of 86%, 71.3%, and 87.2% than Standard Arabic. On the other hand, the least percentages (14%, 12.8%, and 28.7%) prefer Standard Arabic to be used than Egyptian Dialect.