Taboo translation by Iranian state TV after the Islamic Revolution of Iran: a historical corpus-based study

Resumen

The Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979 caused the replacement of a pro-western government with an Islamic republic which also affected the broadcast of foreign audio-visual products on the state TV. As such foreign products contained taboos, censorship seemed necessary according to Islamic laws. This study aimed to investigate how the State TV has administered censorship in English series broadcast during four different decades after the Islamic Revolution. Procedures suggested by Brownlie (2007) were utilized to analyse taboo translation. The findings indicated that the most frequent procedure was the total change of taboo terms: rendering them into irrelevant expressions. This procedure was not included in Brownlie’s framework. Other frequent procedures included omission, toning down, leaving an ST content in the SL, and substitution respectively. It was concluded that procedures for taboo censorship have been inconsistent during all these four decades and the reason might be ideological.