Of Palestine and other things: The spectre of untranslated songs in Elia Suleiman's The Time that Remains. (1st April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Al-Mahadin, Salam
• Is Part Of: Journal of Arab & Muslim media research. Volume 10:Number 1(2017)
• Page Start: 25
• Page End: 40
• Publication Date: 2017-04-01
• Subjects: Mass media -- Periodicals; Mass media -- Arab countries -- Periodicals; Communication -- Arab countries -- Periodicals; Islam -- Periodicals; 302.23089927
• DOI: 10.1386/jammr.10.1.25_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-9411

Abstract

This article has its origins in a more ambitious project tackling instances of screen dialogues that remain unsubtitled, rendering them incomprehensible to viewers from foreign linguistic communities. Palestinian director Elia Suleiman's The Time that Remains (2009) was intended to take up a modest section of a few paragraphs elaborating on the function of tarab songs in mediating the affective-discursive modalities of the film, but the narrative resisted the oppressive – and deeply regulated – confinements of a representational analysis. Rather than receding to the background, the songs seemed to insert themselves along ruptures transcending the pure discursivity of the soundtrack, giving rise to a question that forms the thrust of the article: what affective-discursive function do these songs serve and how much meaning is lost by failing to subtitle them for the benefit of non-Arab audience? Drawing upon insights from affective-discursive theories, Deleuzian approaches to cinema and Heideggerian insights into the nature of understanding, what follows is an investigation of the relationship between cinema and translation, specifically how subtitles merit examination as a unique form of praxis. I shall argue that songs and some objects in films interpellate viewers on both representational and non-representational planes of meaning-construction that often gets lost in audio-visual translation.