Initial Norm

At the age of globalization and the dominance of media, the audiovisual translation is no more considered as a marginal area and plays an important role in bringing cultures closer to each other. While taboo terms are an inseparable part of American movies, the movie maker companies have to reflect the authenticity of their language in audiovisual products in order to make them more tangible for their audiences. However, one of the biggest concerns of Iranian official audiovisual translators is cultural and ideological items such as taboo terms in audiovisual products. One of the aims of the present study was to investigate the strategies applied in the translation of taboo terms in two dubbed American movies by Iranian official audiovisual translators. The results indicated that most of the taboo terms have been altered or deleted ideologically during the process of translation due to the cultural differences between the source and the target culture. Finally, Iranian official audiovisual translators attempted to tone down the strong language, offensive expressions, vulgar descriptions, etc. in the process of dubbing and create an acceptable translation for their audiences.

    Munday asserts that there exist particular norms belonging to each specific time. In other words, each era is of distinguishing norms; sometimes, transgressing these norms results in unsatisfactory outcomes. On this account, translators ought to apply appropriate norms in each era in the act of translation. The present study aimed to investigate the application of Toury’s initial norms in two different translations of The Catcher in the Rye before and after the Islamic Revolution. Firstly, the study investigated the orientation of adequacy and acceptability in both pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary translations. Then, it questioned the appropriateness of the applied norms in these two translations to each era. Accordingly, the results revealed that in the pre-Islamic Revolution translation, acceptability greatly predominated over adequacy; quite the contrary, in the post-Islamic Revolution rendering, adequacy chiefly prevailed over acceptability.