Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Chapter 2. When the Thief of Bagdad tried to steal the show

2019; John Benjamins Publishing Company; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1075/btl.148.02min

0929-7316

Nolwenn Mingant,

Philippine History and Culture

Between 1946 and 1951, U.S. distributors began dubbing a small number of films in Arabic for the North African and Middle Eastern markets. This experiment seems to have been motivated by an economic interest to penetrate those foreign markets and also in response to rising nationalism. Two models of dubbed versions existed at the time: the colonially-imposed French versions and the economically-motivated Persian versions. Battling against the former, and taking inspiration from the latter, U.S. distributors found themselves facing insurmountable political difficulties and eventually abandoned the practice of dubbing in Arabic. This case study foregrounds dubbing as a specific distribution strategy and highlights the political dimensions of this practice.