Subtitling For Pakistani Horror Films: A Translation Of Cultural Fears and Taboos In 'Dahlia' And 'Raat

Abstract

Horror films provide a society’s mirror to reflect on their various apprehensive concerns or rather what the society holds dearly and fears most. Due to the aforementioned culture and religion, movies like Dahlia (2018) and Raat (2015) based on Pakistani cinema depict these features in their movies. Thus, this paper aims at analyzing the subtitling process of such films, view the difficulties and successful approaches that were used in translating the culture with the focus on such aspects as fears and taboos. The research focuses on the way subtitling of Dahlia and Raat handles the religious and cultural aspects such as supernatural intervention and retribution that form part of Pakistani community’s culture. The findings suggest that the subtitles experience a lot of difficulty in conveying the cultural background while at the same ensuring the program is understandable to an audience with little or no knowledge of Pakistan culture and traditions. Some of the Ts are localization and adaptation as well as domestication which seeks to address the gap between the source culture and the target culture. On this premise, the paper infers that subtitling plays a major role in translating the emotional and cultural aspect of horror films so that the viewer is able to appreciate better the culture that the movie depicts. That is why cultural variations play a significant role in how the translation is performed so that readers from all parts of the world will understand what is written without loss of meaning.