Master’s Degree Awarded to Ms. Afnan Ali An-Nahari in Translation
Ms. Afnan Ali Mohammed Ahmed An-Nahari was awarded a Master’s Degree in Translation with an average of Excellent and a grade of (95) for her thesis titled: Cultural Manipulation of Children’s Literature Dubbing from English into Arabic: A Translation Quality Assessment of Extralinguistic Cultural References in The Simpsons, which was submitted to the Community Center for Translation and Language Teaching (CCTLT) – Sana’a University. The MA defense was held on Thursday, February 5, 2026.
The MA Viva-voce Committee, which was formed based on a resolution issued by the Graduate Studies and Scientific Research Council, consisted of the following:
| # | Committee Members | Designation | Position |
| 1 | Prof. Abdulhameed A. Ashuja’a | Internal Examiner | Chair |
| 2 | Prof. Ibraheem Tagaddeen | Main Supervisor | Member |
| 3 | Prof. Mohammed Qasim Al-Sharmani | External Examiner | Member |
The thesis aimed to:
- Explore the main themes, ideological underpinnings, and extralinguistic cultural references embedded in selected examples from The Simpsons, using Critical Discourse Analysis.
- Investigate the problems of translating extralinguistic cultural references in the children’s series The Simpsons from English into Arabic.
- Identify the strategies used in the dubbed Arabic version of The Simpsons, based on Pedersen’s (2011) taxonomy of ECR transfer strategies.
- Assess the translation quality of the dubbed children’s series The Simpsons from English into Arabic in light of Pedersen’s (2017) FAR model of quality assessment.
The study yielded a number of key findings summarized as follows:
- The primary difficulty in translating extralinguistic cultural references lies in rendering meaning heavily embedded in Western culture for a Muslim Arab child audience.
- The translation tends to rely on substituting Western cultural references with elements more compatible with Arab children’s culture.
- These challenges are partly attributable to insufficient oversight by regulatory bodies and translation institutions in evaluating content targeting Arab children, as well as a lack of scholarly research on children’s literature translation.
In light of these findings, the researcher recommended the following:
- Giving greater attention to assessing the quality of translating cultural references in content directed at Muslim Arab children.
- Strengthening collaboration among translators, educational specialists, and reviewers within cartoon production institutions to ensure culturally and pedagogically appropriate dubbed versions.
- Establishing clear criteria for evaluating the quality of translating cultural references in animated works, with due consideration for cultural suitability and semantic
- Encouraging further research on the impact of translators’ cultural choices on shaping the ideology of Muslim Arab children across various animated series.
The defense session was attended by a number of professors, researchers, students, colleagues, and the researcher’s family.
You may also like
PhD Degree Awarded to Mr. Muammar Al-Assadi in Cardiology
PhD Degree Awarded to Ms. Ahlam Abdullah Mohammed
