Gender Stereotypes in the Localization of Video Games Into Persian: A Case Study of Grand Theft Auto V

Audiovisual translation (avt) is a field within translation studies which is concerned with how multimedia contexts are translated. translation can become an important tool for transferring particular ideologies and stereotypes presented in the original versions, meanwhile increasing attention is being paid to how multimedia contents can contribute to the production of social stereotypes and clichés (see feral, 2011; de marco, 2012; de marco 2006a, 2006b). subtitles constitute an important part of avt; however, fewer studies have addressed the role it can play in the preservation and/or transferring of ideologies and stereotypes. the present study seeks to shed light on the representation of gender-laden terms in subtitle of videogames, with particular focus on the role that translation can play in the reinforcement or debilitation of gender stereotypes available in persian subtitles of grand theft auto v. to this end, the data were gathered from the english subtitles of grand theft auto v and their persian counterparts proposed by gamesub, which is a platform providing unofficial but professional persian subtitles for video games. the screen was recorded while playing the game both with english and persian subtitles. then, the english gender stereotypes were extracted from the subtitles and simultaneously were contrasted with their persian counterparts to identify whether the stereotypes have been preserved or changed while translated. the findings suggest that despite the translation of videos, a naturalizing approach to the translation of gender-related terms is more common in subtitling video games.