These interviewees include an exhibitor in a regional film import and distribution company, film classifiers, and film translators. The analysis of this system is based upon interviews with key agents involved in decision making regarding the foreign films selected for exhibition and the censorial practices implemented to make these selected films culturally suitable for commercial cinemas in the AME.

This study which casts light on the control enforced on foreign film exhibition in commercial cinemas in the Arab Middle East (AME), uncovers a system of foreign film exhibition in the AME that has been ever obscure to the public audience, readership, and researchers in fields like film studies and the broadcast of audiovisual content. Ĭontrol over film exhibition in commercial film theatres globally has been perceived as a practice that an exclusive authority has enforced for so long. Furthermore, the existing studies have revealed that there are cultural, ideological, religious, and moral issues, such as translating (sexual) humour, obscenity, and swearing, that challenge AV translators when subtitling an AV text from (an) open culture(s) like the Western culture(s) to (a) conservative one(s) like the Arabic culture(s) (Mazid, 2006 Al-Adwan, 2009 Alkadi, 2010 Thawabteh, 2011Thawabteh,, 2017and Khalaf and Rashid, 2016.). In the case of subtitled AV programmes into Arabic, Khuddro (2000), Mazid (2006), Alkadi (2010), Thawabteh (2011), and Debbas and Haider (2020) have highlighted some errors AV translators make due to linguistic, technical, and cultural issues they might encounter in the AV text.

Furthermore, subtitling and dubbing as the two major AVT forms in the Arab world have been reviewed to account for the pros and cons of each form in the context of translating AV material into Arabic (Mazid, 2006 Gamal, 2008 Alkadi, 2010 Thawabteh, 2011 Khalaf and Rashid, 2016 Debbas and Haider, 2020).

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