International Research and Academic scholar society

IRASS Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Issue-9(September), Volume-3 2026

1. Examining the Quality of the Arabic Subtitles of Legal Terms: A Corpus...
141

Mohammed Kasmi*
Laboratory of Applied Communication, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Mohammed I University, Oujda, Morocco
1-8
http://doi.org/10.67564/IRASSJAHSS.v3.i9.0266

One of the most challenging tasks in specialized audiovisual translation (AVT) is the translation of legal terms from English into Arabic. The subtitling of these terms poses many challenges, mainly because of being domain-bound and culture-specific. The time and space limitations of subtitling exacerbate these challenges. The aim of this study is to analyze the Arabic official subtitles of the American legal drama series Suits (USA Network, 2011-2019) produced and written by Aaron Korsh using an evaluative corpus-based approach. A purposive corpus of 60 legal terms was collected from all nine seasons and compared systematically with the Arabic subtitle terms. Thematic categorization was done for each term, and analysis of the terms was carried out using the eclectic framework that combines Baker's (1992) equivalence translation strategies and Pedersen's (2017) FAR quality-assessment model. The results show that the successful strategies are official equivalent (40%) and functional equivalent (21.7%), which together account for (61.7%) of all translatorial decisions and have the highest FAR quality scores. Paraphrasing (33.3%) is functionally adequate, but violates terminological precision or register faithfulness. Literal translation (3.3%) results in conceptual distortion and unnatural renderings of the target text. Literal translation with gloss (1.7%) is another strategy that foreignizes the source text legal terms, but contributes to incomprehension on the part of the Arab viewer. Three persistent problems emerge in this study: (1) the common-law/civil-law gap in the legal systems between the United States and the Arab world; (2) the diglossic gap between English and Arabic; and (3) the constraints that subtitling imposes, both spatial and temporal, resulting in lexical compression of multi-word legal units.

2. Empowerment of Persons with Disability: A Case Study of Female Wheelch...
134

Thaim Saidu Kargbo*1, Morrison K Lahai2, Victor T S Kabba3
1*M.Phil Candidate, Institute of Geography and Development Studies, School of Environmental Sciences, Njala University, 2-3Institute of Geography and Development Studies, School of Environmental Sciences, Njala University
9-19
http://doi.org/10.67564/IRASSJAHSS.v3.i9.0265

This study examined the “The Empowerment of Persons with Physical Disability: A Case Study of Female Wheelchair Users in Central Freetown”, Sierra Leone. Guided by the social model of disability and the capability approach, it pursued four objectives: to describe the socio-economic and demographic profile of these women, to assess their access to livelihood skills opportunities, to identify the factors associated with that access, and to examine the challenges to their empowerment. A mixed-methods design was used. Quantitative data were gathered through a structured survey of 104 female wheelchair users and analysed in the R statistical environment using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, Spearman correlations, non-parametric comparisons, and binary logistic regression. Qualitative data were gathered through key informant guide with seven purposively selected key informants and analysed thematically, then triangulated with the survey results. The findings describe a group of prime working-age women, most of them polio survivors with primary schooling or less, who are almost entirely outside formal employment and survive through trading and begging. Although awareness of opportunities was high, only a little over half had tried to access training, and the leading barriers were admission requirements and fees rather than physical inaccessibility. In the regression, the possession of a livelihood skill was the strongest independent predictor of trying to access training, with an odds ratio of 11.86, while age, education, and family size were not significant. The study concludes that empowerment for this group, through funded, accessible, and enforced support, into genuine self-reliance. It recommends at policy level, include the position papers of disabled persons' organisations in national planning and in any revision of the Constitution, adopt compulsory free education for persons with disability at every level, promote economic empowerment and psychosocial support, enforcement of the Persons with Disability Act 2011.





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