Censorship in Dubbed Movies

Abstract

The present research is an attempt to investigate the cases of censorship in dubbed movies shown on TV in Iran – namely “Godfather” series, and to establish the norms based on which the whole system is operating to apply this strategy in AVT as a mode of translation. Adopting Toury’s Descriptive Translation Studies and Even-Zohar’s Polysystem Theory, this descriptive study tried to find the answer to the following questions: What are the most common manifestations of censorship in Persian dubbed movies on Iranian TV? Are they rule-governed? In what ways? What are the determining factors in the application of censorship? Are they ideological? Does censorship cause any significant change in the entire meaning of the film? If yes, how much? After collection of relevant data, they were analyzed using translation shifts, for it seems that censorship is a kind of shift in ideology. As a result, units of analysis ranged from censorship of the scenes to censorship of the words uttered.