Minimizing Cultural Manipulation in Audiovisual Translation-based Language Learning through Adaptation

Abstract

Audiovisual translation has recently received a considerable attention, particularly by FL teaching and learning theorists. While learners try to focus on the linguistic input, culture overrides other considerations. Audiovisual Text-based language learning, particularly if MT-rendered, serves as a source of cultural and ideological manipulation through the emphasis on, and literal rendering of, the Source Langue Text. AVT issues go beyond language, simple entertainment and formal linguistic norms, into broader cultural and ideological locus of argument, whether they are rendered by means of humans, or a machine. Subtitling, being a less costly type of AVT, compared to dubbing, literally transmits to learners the most hazardous nuances of the Source Language culture. Even-Zohar -in her Polysystem Theory- states that, “… I conceive of translated literature not only as an integral system within any literary polysystem, but as a most active system within it”, underlining the fact that Audiovisual texts, being a type of literary texts, also interact as active systems that necessitates mitigating learners’ exposition to such a system activity. Ensuring that the audiovisual texts to be used in language learning settings are rendered by human translators, not by machines, is necessary to avoid or diminish, learners’ direct exposure to the polysystem activity of the Source Text in question, so as to drive the learners’ attention towards the linguistic aspects of the audiovisual text, maintain the aims of the AVT-based language learning setting. It is, indeed, seems impossible to provide concrete guidelines pertaining to the use of AVT in individual learning settings, yet in directed AVT use in classrooms, teachers are highly recommended to use covert translations rather than the ones that violates cultural norms, particularly those rendered by a machine. Educational policymakers are urged to emphasize the use of censored audiovisual materials that are also covertly translated in a way that maintain learners’ own culture, moral values and social norms.