Cultural Adaptation in IRIB’s Dubbing The case of “Due South” series, episode 65

Abstract

Dubbing is the main mode of audiovisual translations which is used on IRIB (Iran’s national TV) for transferring and broadcasting foreign series such as "Due South". Given priority to the target culture (that is Iranian culture), IRIB's policy is to filter and transfer foreign assumptions and values; so, the main strategies in IRIB's dubbing may match well with Schleiermacher’s (1998) concepts of "domestication" in order to create what Toury (1980) calls "acceptable translation" which is "oriented towards the norms of the target culture" (Agost, 2001, p. 71). In this way, some adaptations were observed to change the story, so the original dialogues of one episode of "Due South" with its Persian dubbed dialogues were examined sentence by sentence in order to find cases which are domesticated, and the possible cultural reasons behind them were discussed. The result seems to be a strategy of violating the main plot and changing the whole story of this episode, and ignoring the viewers' expectations.