Cultural nuances in subtitling the religious discourse marker wallah in Jordanian drama into English

Mohd Nour Al Salem (), Sharif Alghazo and Marwan Jarrah
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Mohd Nour Al Salem: The University of Jordan
Sharif Alghazo: The University of Jordan
Marwan Jarrah: The University of Jordan

Palgrave Communications, 2025, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract This study examines the strategies and challenges of subtitling the religious discourse marker والله wallah (by God) in Jordanian Arabic drama on Netflix. Two works, the series Jinn (2019) and the film Theeb (2014), are chosen as the corpus of the data. The study analyses the pragmatic functions of the religious marker wallah, which Arabs usually use to swear to God in different contexts and examines its English subtitles. The theoretical framework partially employs Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) literal translation and omission strategies and Baker’s (2018) translation approaches, including equivalence and paraphrase. A qualitative analysis is conducted to analyse the functions of occurrences of this marker in its pragmatic context, along with its subtitling into English. The study found that the religious marker is frequently omitted in the subtitles or rendered into various linguistic elements such as speech acts, intensifiers, emphatic expressions, filler words, and sarcastic utterances. wallah was either paraphrased or literally translated in some instances. The study concludes that it is necessary to employ unique techniques to overcome the cultural and linguistic gaps, depending on the function of the religious discourse marker, and to improve the reliability and quality of interpreting religious markers in audiovisual settings.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-04515-6

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