Profanity and policy: investigating the subtitling of taboo and offensive language from English into Arabic on Netflix

It compares Netflix’s subtitling policy, as stated in its Arabic Timed Text Style Guide, with traditional Arab subtitling norms to determine whether Netflix Arabic subtitles tend to follow adequacy-oriented strategies (prioritising fidelity to the source text) or acceptability-oriented strategies (prioritising cultural and social norms). <br> <br>The analysis is based on 909 English–Arabic “coupled pairs” of taboo and offensive expressions extracted manually from two Netflix original series, Orange Is the New Black and Grace and Frankie.

The results <br>reveal that adequacy-oriented strategies dominate (68.21%) compared to acceptability-oriented ones (31.79%). Literal translation (33.88%) and dysphemism (21.90%) are the most frequently used strategies, showing a marked departure from traditional Arab subtitling practices. Conversely, omission appears in only 4.84% of cases, highlighting a major shift in Arab audiovisual translation norms. <br> <br>This thesis contributes to the growing body of Arabic audiovisual translation research by evidencing a gradual movement away from euphemisation towards greater textual fidelity, shaped by the institutional influence of global streaming platforms like Netflix. <br><br><i>Thesis is embargoed until 31 December 2030.</i>