Visual Censorship in Dubbed Movies

Dubbing has a special place in Iranian audiovisual landscape. Hereupon, various research has been carried out in dubbing and censorship. This study investigates how the three Iranian audiovisual media, namely, the IRIB, the VODs, and fandubs are different in their visual censorship approaches. These media have their supervisors, executives, and audience with rather different ideologies and policies to follow. The first two media follow officially defined censorship policies and principles, and the third does not follow any specific and official ones. Since audiovisual texts have verbal and visual dimensions, the data are analyzed based on both translation and cinematic frameworks. The theoretical framework is Zauberga's censorship strategies, triangulated with Dukate's, which have been redefined in line with the purpose of this study. The second framework includes cinematic techniques used in the visual censorship of the movies. Twelve English films and their three dubbed versions is investigated in terms of 'adverse contents' and analyzed based on the above-mentioned theoretical frameworks. The 'adverse content' is determined according to the official inter-organizational booklet of content audit policies, criteria, and principles issued by the IRIB organization. The results show that, despite the policies and principles issued for the IRIB and the VOD audiovisual media, these two have adopted significantly different approaches both in the extent of visual censorship and the techniques used which can be due to their different platforms, supervisors, and executives. The research results are beneficial for the producers and the consumers of these media and the policymakers of the field. Researchers can also use the comprehensive model presented in this study to analyze their visual censorship data.