The Return of the Diglossic Son: The Virtual Life of Translation, Subtitling, and Arabic Polyglossia Amr Kamal The City University of New York abstract: As most academic research on translation in the Arab world focuses on printed material, the translation of audiovisual mass media, such as television and cinema, remains understudied. Analyzing a sketch from the Egyptian comedy show Saturday Night Live bi-l-‘arabī, I shed light on the contemporary polyglossic dynamics in Arabic influenced by Arabic television channels and the process of subtitling and dubbing foreign media into Arabic. Situating the translation of foreign audiovisual media within the longer history of translation in the Arab world, I argue that subtitling and dubbing of foreign films and television shows played a key role in the translation and the standardization of modern formal Arabic. The technique of dubbing, which began to emerge in the 1990s, has also participated in the creation of pan-Arab poly- glossia, a linguistic situation that echoes the linguistic exchange during the Nahd. a and the first decades of the twentieth century. hus far, the translation of audiovisual foreign-language material for mass media into Arabic has rarely been explored in Arabic cultural studies.1 Most of the research on translation focuses on print media, prioritizing as such the history of literature and jour- Tnalism. However, a recent comic sketch from the Egyptian show Saturday Night Live bi-l-arabī, a franchise of the American program, exposes that blind spot in the study of popular Egyptian culture. It turns our attention to an alternative history of translation in Egypt. By parodying the I would like to thank Richard Jacquemond, Frédéric Lagrange, and Patrick Tonks for their feedback and comments on this article. 1 An earlier, and longer, version of this article was published as “La traduction n’est pas morte, elle est télévisée! Traduction des médias audiovisuels, culture égyptienne et panarabisme pluriglossique dans les médias contemporains” [Translation is not dead, it is televised! Translation of audiovisual media, Egyptian culture, and polyglossic pan-Arabism in contemporary media], in Culture pop en Égypte entre mainstream commercial et contestations [Pop culture in Egypt between commercial mainstream and contestations], ed. Richard Jacquemond and Frédéric Lagrange (Paris: Riveneuve, 2020), 159–97. I thank Richard Jacquemond, Frédéric Lagrange, and Maison d’édition Riveneuve for permission to publish here a translated and revised version of that article. dibur literary journal Issue 8, Spring 2020 Translational Transactions 84 dibur language used by contemporary Egyptian television viewers, the sketch sheds light on the current mass media boom in the Arab world and the impact of translation, by means of subtitling and dubbing of foreign media, on the evolution of modern Arabic. As the sketch reveals, this situa- tion galvanized a complex linguistic dynamic that surpasses the traditional framework of Arabic diglossia to produce a pan-Arab polyglossia.2 In contrast to the classical definition of diglossia, comprising a high and a low register of one language, this linguistic practice includes several lan- guages and various registers of formal and colloquial Arabic at once. In this article, using the SNL sketch as a starting point, I offer a review of the history of translation in Egypt through the lens of the translation of foreign audiovisual media. In doing so, I aim to illuminate the impact of the heretofore underestimated ubiquitous role of subtitling and dubbing in shaping Arabic linguis- tics and culture. This history, I posit, illuminates a continuum between the pan-Arab exchange during the Nahd. a (the Arab renaissance) and the present. Such exchange differs and exceeds the typically studied example of the pan-Arabist movement of Nasser’s era (1956–70). As Walter Armbrust suggests, the diglossic specificity of the Arab world should occupy a more eminent position in Egyptian and Arab cultural and historical studies. They should take into account that “the Egyptian nation” was simultaneously “imagined” and “narrated” in formal Arabic and the vernacular. The superior hierarchical position accorded to literary Arabic over the regional dialects, which emulates the European linguistic model and prioritizes the official language over its spoken counterparts, erases the role of nontraditional mass media in the con- solidation of Egyptian nationalism and pan-Arab identity.3 By the same token, nationalism in other Arab countries, as well as their perspective on pan-Arabism, was also imagined and nar- rated in a polyglossic context, which included the languages and vernaculars of the colonizers (French, English, and Italian) and the various registers of literary and colloquial Arabic (col- loquial Egyptian diffused by mass media, vernaculars of the Levant, the Arab Gulf, and the Maghreb). The evolution of social media complicates this context even further, especially after the Arab Spring, where one can even say that the Arab nations and cultures are not only imag- ined and narrated but also Facebooked, Instagrammed, and tweeted by Arabic speakers who use all possible registers and languages to create, negotiate, and reinvent their own vision of their immediate society as well as of Arab identity in general.4 the return of the prodigal son: a diglossic crisis In the SNL sketch, a young Egyptian man from the middle class returns home after ten years of absence, only to find his house converted into a tower of Babel, divided among several languages and various registers of formal and colloquial Arabic.5 We see the young man’s mother, sitting on a gilded sofa, watching an American soap opera subtitled in formal Arabic (fus. h. ā).6 She exhibits 2 I chose to describe this phenomenon as “polyglossia,” in contrast to the frequently used term “heteroglossia,” to underscore the various linguistic registers existing in Arab media, which include several regional, and national, colloquial and formal Arabic, in addition to other languages. 3 Walter Armbrust, “The Golden Age before the Golden Age,” inMass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond, ed. Walter Armbrust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 303. 4 See, for instance, the Twitter accountanees3ebeid , which uses the cultural repertoire of Anīs Ebeid Laboratories to critique contemporary Egyptian society: https://twitter.com/anees3ebeid?lang=en, accessed December 6, 2018. 5 “Tammat al-targama,” Saturday Night Live bi-l-‘arabī, season 1, episode 3, February 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGjZYGG5Iwg, accessed July 6, 2018. 6 I use “formal Arabic” instead of “Modern Standard Arabic” to highlight the various registers of Arabic, which exist under the umbrella of al-lugha l-‘arabiyya l-fus. h. ā, a concept that covers many registers at once: the modern literary kamal | the return of the diglossic son 85 no reaction to her son’s return and asks him to step away from the television set, because she does not want to miss any developments in her favorite show. Ironically, when the mother — whose name, Tammat al-Targama,7 means “the translation is accomplished” — attempts to communicate with her son, she finds herself incapable of expressing herself exclusively in the Egyptian dialect. Instead, she mixes colloquial Egyptian with a formal Arabic typically used for subtitling foreign-language shows. The son, in a state of shock, asks her why she speaks “like the television.” Later, to his surprise, he discovers that the entire family suffers from the same linguistic trouble. Each communicates by means of a register of Arabic featured in audiovisual media. For instance, the young brother speaks only in the formal Arabic mainly used for dubbing Japanese animes. The middle brother, on the other hand, expresses him- self in a register of colloquial Egyptian associated with advertising and game shows. Finally, the father speaks in the Syrian dialect, which recently became popular in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world by means of Turkish soap operas dubbed in that dialect.8 The mother and son decide to call a doctor, and later a policeman, to find a remedy for this diglossic confusion. But this linguistic nightmare worsens, as they discover that even the doctor and the policeman speak “like the television.” They reiterate a number of hackneyed sen- tences frequently uttered by actors playing their professions on Egyptian television. The police- man proceeds to replay one of the most clichéd cop scenes in Egyptian cinema. He points his gun at Tammat al-Targama and announces in colloquial Egyptian: “We finally meet again Mrs. Tammat. Get ready to die!” The sketch concludes with Tammat al-Targama parodying American soap operas. She turns toward the screen and comments in English: “For one second there, I was standing and all I could think about was I was gonna die.” The son, then, unconsciously looks at the camera and begins to translate his mother’s words into formal Arabic. Suddenly, he realizes that, just like everyone else, he also communicates in several varieties of Arabic simultaneously and wonders in shock what is wrong with him. In that moment, the mother recognizes her son and greets him in Egyptian Arabic: “My dear son, welcome back!”9 This sketch reflects the current linguistic landscape of Egyptian society, especially after the media boom of the 1990s, an era characterized by the proliferation of foreign and private Arabic satellite channels, which introduced new