Clarity and Linguistic Authenticity
Those people who search about this movie for the first time are in confusion about the lingoes of characters. Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic are the languages used in the dialogue. In the movie, the main character Jesus and His disciples speak Old Aramaic. In past, it was the daily language of most Jews.
On the other hand, Hebrew was spoken by the Jewish authorities, although in reality, this language was for religion only. Lastly, Latin was the language of the Romans. Koine Greek was another side tongue that Roman Empire speaks. The Gospels were in Koine Greek as well, with several words and phrases in Aramaic included.
With these many languages, it was difficult for people of the same culture to understand them completely. And the foreign people who were not familiar with any of these languages did not even search it. Since it was introduced, it kept like this for some time i.e. without any subtitles. And when the director and his team got only little views, they knew that something was wrong.
It was the language barrier that was limiting the potential of the movie. To solve this problem and establish clarity of dialogues, the director decided to introduce other versions of this movie in subtitles of other languages. Let’s learn more about this!
Arabic Subtitles
Arabic, a Southern-Central Semitic language is a part of large areas including North Africa, most of the Arabia Peninsula, and other parts of the Middle East. In the regions where Arabic is the national or official language, people are very religious. And because of this, people would love to see ‘The Passion of the Christ’ in Arabic subtitles.
At this point, the role of different translation agencies, linguistics, and writers is very crucial. It is because they take the job of comprehending the dialogues and conversations of people and then write it down in the text of their target language. The language for the subtitles should be according to the preference of the target audience.