Subtitling: The Route to Resistance, Resilience and Activism in Palestine Context

Description

Translation Studies (TS) has been unequivocally deemed eclectic in nature, that is, it has forged a good relationship with other sister disciplines such as sociology, computer sciences, media studies, among many others, thus new sub-disciplines have inextricably emerged as is the case with translation technology and audio-visual translation, respectively. For the past few decades, TS has accorded more priority to the confluence of translation, conflict and activism, with a view to showing whether or not the question of translator’s intervention in the Target Language (SL) text is ethically acceptable. The present project carefully examines the socio-political dynamics of subtitling as manifested in the war against Gaza which broke out in 2023, a war that has not only caused many casualties and brutal subjugation of Gazans so far, but it has also underscored the role of subtitling in shaping narratives of resistance, resilience and solidarity with the weak and defenceless. The project looks at the role of subtitles (by aficionado activists) in constructing reality (i.e., the most grotesquely tragic stories of loss on part of the hopeless and helpless) and promoting ideologically-motivated discourse, mainly highlighting marginalized voices in the contexts of Palestine. The sample of the project consists of Tucker Carlson’s videos (five in total) from the digital platform of Facebook in 2026. The project reveals that the theoretically grounded subtitling norms (e.g., synchronicity, two-line subtitle, position on screen, typeface and distribution, segmentation, etc.) as proposed by Karamitroglou’s (1998) seminal work, being violated, obviously for ideologically-motivated reasons (i.e., showing a great deal of resistance dealing with the war, months of steadfast, the resilience of and solidarity with Gazans). The project also reveals that the videos which have gone viral are meant for resistance (e.g., encouraging refusal for Israeli narratives, resilience (e.g., helping Palestinians recover easily and quickly from the consequences of the war on Gaza) and activism (i.e., campaigning in public to bring about political change to Palestinians). The project concludes that when dealing with contesting narratives as is the case in Palestine and Israel, both of which have been embroiled in conflict since 1948, the subtitles aim to repose much confidence in Palestinians and Arabs audience and highlight those Palestinians clearly emasculated due to the atrocities perpetrated.