Cultural Nuances in Translation: Subtitling and Dubbing in Indian Cinema

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the particulars involved in subtitling and dubbing in Indian cinema namely the sanctions and the presentation of cultural subtleties. In a multilingual country like India, where films often traverse linguistic and regional borders, translation becomes not just a semantic act but a profoundly cultural one. The analysis examines how idiomatic expressions, humour, religious references, caste markers and regional dialects can be re-fashioned or occasionally weakened as they underpin the translation process between subtitling and dubbing. Further supported with the excerpts from certain case studies of some of the celebrated films of India, the paper also criticizes against the impoverishment on both the semantic and cultural intricacies in translations. It also demonstrates the ways in which translators struggle with the tension between source culture fidelity and target audience accessibility. The article claims that successful audiovisual translation in Indian cinema depends on a delicate blending of linguistic precision, contextual and cultural adaptability. The results add to existing translation studies perspectives, especially in the postcolonial and multicultural Indian context, where possibilities to develop a more culturally satisfying quality for translations of cinematic texts are opened.