The Effect of Translators’ Religious Ideology on the Transmission of ReligiousConcepts in Film Dubbing: A Case Study of a Religious-Islamic Context

Abstract

The effect of ideology on transmission of religious-specific terms and concepts in
dubbing is a highly problematic issue in the area of Audiovisual Translation (AVT), especially in
a religious-Islamic context. In Iran, as an Islamic country with a specific religious ideology,
other religions are respected, but disseminating information about a specific religion and also a
doctrine incompatible with the Islamic ideas is not allowed, specifically via mass media. Based
on Pedersen’s strategies (2011), this paper investigated how the translator has rendered the
religious terms and foreign doctrines in the film “Life of Pi” (dubbed in Iran). This article
concluded that the religious ideology hinders the transmission of foreign religious ideas and
doctrines and, as a result, leads to religious, ideological manipulation during the process of
translation and also makes the translator choose “omission” and “substitution” as the most
common strategies for the benefit of the target culture for translating the religious concepts.