Comments on: The Motherload of #UsefulEuphemisms: Subtitling Foreign Media in Egypt http://teammaha.com/2015/02/the-motherload-of-usefuleuphemisms-subtitling-foreign-media-in-egypt/ Poking fun at the language of your favorite chronically lonely Egyptian Sat, 09 May 2020 14:42:07 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.23 By: GH56734 http://teammaha.com/2015/02/the-motherload-of-usefuleuphemisms-subtitling-foreign-media-in-egypt/#comment-137 Wed, 10 Jun 2015 05:23:44 +0000 http://teammaha.com/?p=376#comment-137 Fox Series used to have a subtitled run of “The Simpsons” and it was very racy.
Homer’s F bomb scene was translated as “ن…” (could be completed in colloquial dialects in various ways with the same rough meaning)
Anti-religion episodes don’t get showed period (it’s a highly unpopular thing to do, even besides the legal issues), but “god” mentioned is translated as الخالق (the creator)
lesbians use the normal translation سحاقيات,
gay use the “شاذ” (literally “irregular”, which has a double meaning – both eccentric/unique behavior -used often as شاذ الأطوار, and the commonly used word for the sexuality -مثلي (from the word for “the same” plus the relation suffix) is a neutered politically-correct word local feminist organizations came with, and it’s seldom used outside some Arabic-speaking western news channels- so your example from MBC2 (a Saudi-owned network that butchers translations done by the Lebanese studios a lot – they air unedited elsewhere -) was first worded as شاذ الاطوار then censored a second time.
Sex is intact, as جماع / يضاجع…
Breasts as نهد / صدر / ثدي
Ass as أرداف / ثدي
Testicles as خصيتين …
They even go to the length of preserving sexual double entendres.
The other flowery f bomb slurs that are more of a speech pattern than an integral part of the meaning. are just omitted but that’s not that different from how these shows are subbed in other languages

Often for MBC2, Lebanese subbing studios just use variants of the offending word that mean the exact same thing but require a higher entry level such as نفق for “to die” (for plots involving resurrection, often censored), or شراب معتق for “fine vintage drink” (the vintage part exclusively refers to wine quality in Arabic… and شراب is often used colloquially for wine/alcohol) instead of just saying wine, and ثمل instead of سكران for “drunk”. The Saudi censors almost always miss these variants, which makes the translators lives easier (they do translations for cinema premieres, and no one would attend overly censored showings, but they don’t want to do a separate script just for MBC2).

]]> By: Ethan http://teammaha.com/2015/02/the-motherload-of-usefuleuphemisms-subtitling-foreign-media-in-egypt/#comment-103 Wed, 25 Feb 2015 04:54:04 +0000 http://teammaha.com/?p=376#comment-103 And according to MBC the Arabic translation of “You got punk’d” is نُفِذَ مقلب بك. I like to pronounce the Dammateen on مقلب for the full effect.

]]> By: Ahmed Ghanem http://teammaha.com/2015/02/the-motherload-of-usefuleuphemisms-subtitling-foreign-media-in-egypt/#comment-101 Sun, 22 Feb 2015 11:59:33 +0000 http://teammaha.com/?p=376#comment-101 This is pure win :-)

And in the spirit of this post: “This blog is so cool” -> “المدونة دي ساقعة جدًا”!

]]>