1. Soap opera and melodrama: to what similarities and differences?

According to Raymond Williams’ Television Studies: The Key Concepts, soap

opera began on commercial radio in the U.S (1930). They were aimed at what was
assumed to be its largely female audience “housewives”. Since it has become one of
the most popular and common forms of entertainment television world-wide, soap
opera includes many features of melodrama that refers mainly to a dramatic work,
exaggerating plot, characters and settings in order to appeal to the viewers’ emotions.
It encompasses too many dramatic events such as marriages, affairs, divorces, love
relationships, intimacy, betrayal and death. Taking from melodrama, soaps tend to use
plots that appeal to the heightened emotions of the audiences often dealing with, as
Dircks’ Melodrama Films asserts, “crisis of human emotion, failed romance or
friendship, strained familial situations, tragedy, illness, neuroses, or emotional and
physical hardship”. However melodramatic formats include the series, consisting of
self contained episodes, each with a classic dramatic structure of
conflict/complication/resolution in which the main and supporting characters remain
the same week after week. On the other hand, soap opera is a genre in which it is
usual to find overlapping narratives or story lines; many characters involved in
different plots within one episode. Williams accentuates “soaps are continuous serials,
which means that they have an indefinite run and do not therefore feature a final
episode in which the narrative is closed or resolved”.

To illustrate, Tarria Modleski (1982) states that the structural openness of soaps is
an essentially ‘feminine’ narrative form. She means that pleasure in narrative focuses
on closure, while soaps delay resolution and make anticipation an end in itself. Then,
why viewers prefer to watch soaps? Herzog’s study of soap opera viewers lists the
three main reasons for engagement in soap as "emotional release, fantasy fulfilment
and desire for information and advice"; watching soaps in most cases is a sign of
escapism and getting out of bored (cited in Brown’s Soap Opera and Women’s Talk ,
1994, p. 68). Indeed, what is known about soaps is that their name has been taken
from its sponsors “detergent companies”; in her Love and Ideology in the afternoon,
Laura Stengl questions “isn’t it unprecedented for a cultural product to indicate so
crudely its material origin…and its conscription in the battle between different
commercial brands? In fact, it is twofold function: to promote the sale of household
products, and to subsume the house wife in her role by offering her romantic
hedonism and gratification. It is as if saying to women “learn how to be the ideal
house wife, watching and washing”.

To back up its discursive politics of representation, soaps rely on many techniques;

some of which are:

 Cliff hanger: it is where a question, decision or a piece of information is left

unresolved at the close of an episode. It is a deliberate use under which
audiences are hooked into turning in next episode. Anticipation then is part of
the pleasure given by soaps.

 An infinitely extended middle/ openness: it is John Fisk’s term; while

traditional forms of popular television present the viewer with a narrative
storytelling based on a beginning, middle and an end, soaps instead never get
fully resolved. In soaps climax and denouement are overlapped and mixed
together.

 Long ranning device: soaps are endless serials that make viewers join at any
time. This technique identifies soaps as that that have no single narrative line;
several storoes are woven to get more attraction. Christine Geraghtoy (1991, p
211) notes that “the longer they run the more impossible it seems to imagine
them ending”.

 Gossiping: is another key device or feature usually used in soaps; it acts as

commentary on the action as well as the basis of dramatic events in soaps. It
can also inform the audience of an event they have missed and provide new
information and more detail of the event. It is an important and integral part of
the action and development of the stories; information can be imparted,
withheld, revealed accidentally or hinted at. Gossiping leads to speculation
among the characters, which in turn encourages the audience to speculate
about future events.
  Redundancy and repetition: because viewers are supposed to be interrupted,
soaps used this technique to make interrupted viewing impossible and to
facilitate the new watcher’s sense of getting the plot. Then soaps can watched
at any time and beginning from any episode; no big difference is made.

These techniques reiterate the fact that soap opera is a genre that is distinguished
by its specific narrative form, including overlapping intrigues and ‘continuity’ of
characters with dynamic and complex interactions. Romantic, sexual relationships and
class struggles are also confirmed to be the nut of soaps’ episodes.

2. Dubbed soap opera: From Turkish to Syrian (Gumus to Noor)

From Mexican to Moroccan Arabic (Ayna Abi)

Dubbed soaps are one of nowadays debatable issues that many scholars have been
analyzing, questioning and criticizing. It has become an arena of research by itself
because of its many multi-dimensional discourses. First, dubbing refers to the act of
translating a text from its original language to the so-called target language.
“Translation is a mode of representing identity and triggers a linguistic, philosophical
and commercial debate” Alexandra Buccianti affirms. It is a process by which a text
is transported –as a flux- from one linguistic community to another, and by flux I do
refer to the whole package of this text/film/soap (its cultural, social and ideological
discursive representations).

In contemporary way of dubbing, another type has been added; dubbing an

audiovisual text with another language to be heard and not seen. This method is
applied on films, serials, series and soaps and here our concern is to study the process
through which soaps can be dubbed and its negative effects on the viewers of the
dubbed language in two main soaps, Noor and Ayna Abi

Noor is a Turkish-based soap that has been dubbed into the Syrian language,
generating more than 85 million Arab viewers in its final episode august 30, 2008
while it received little attention in its home land in 2005, Alexandra Buccianti asserts.
Having Gumus/Noor dubbed into Syrian dialect by Sara production studio in
Damascus has challenged the traditional literary Arabic dubbing of soaps, that had
created disconnect between the audience who found the language too difficult to
understand and inadequate for the scenario of the plot.

Because it didn’t only translate, nut also transposed, adopt and re-appropriate, the
Syrian dubbing of Noor has taken many processes to fit the context of Arab societies.
We can say that it is a means of localizing the global and globalizing the local; that is
to say, invoking E. Said’s “Traveling Theory”, when Gamus was dubbed into Noor, it
has taken the shape of the new context to which it was translated: Arab- society.
Thereof, many modifications were made; in her article “Dubbed Turkish soap operas
conquering the Arab world: social liberation or cultural alienation?”, Alexandra Buccianti argues
that it begins with the ‘Arabization’ of the names. Mehmet was preferred to be
Muhannad, an ancient and rare Arabic name, portraying a desire of uniqueness. Other
arrangements were more concerned with the format and the content; concerning the
format, Noor was 100 episodes of one hour each in its Turkish language while it has
been aired in 154 episodes of 45 minutes each. As to the content, which is more
important, many erotic scenes were censored since they have been seen as
inappropriate with the Arabo- cultural, social and religious values. Even though this
censorship, Noor has triggered many marital crises when the female viewer started to
ask for more romance and respect as that between Noor and Muhannad. Here, where
the limitations of soaps in general and dubbed ones in particular exist and lie. Since it
is an amalgamation of a whole culture, Noor has affected its viewers in terms of
values and cultural identities.

Moroccans were daily viewers of Noor on MBC channel, but their approximate
number can’t be compared to the Mexican dubbed soap opera Ayna Abi, being the
most significant case that has generated a media revolution in the Moroccan society.
This Moroccan Arabic dubbed soap confirms Noami Sakr’s argument that “media
flows are (…) facilated where the language is shared”. The act of dubbing this film
into Moroccan Arabic facilitates its circulation throughout Moroccan viewers; it
creates a sense of belonging to the characters identified with. This film, powerfully,
shows the cultural dimension of translation and its hegemony, targeting a certain
society. It is a Mexican culture, values and social roles that have been dubbed and
localized to raise the soap’s consumption and circulation among all Moroccan
segments without any kind of segmentation. While in the past, most soaps were
dubbed into standard Arabic, now with the social liberation or what is called the
democratization of media outlets all Moroccans, literate and illiterate, old, young and
children can have access to entertainment through soaps, mainly the likes of Ayna
Abi. It has characterized a media ‘bombarding’ era on the Moroccan national TV for
its inclusion of all Moroccans’ consumption. What is new in this soap is its child
characters’ involvement in the content. Therefore, while the previous soap opera Noor
targets mostly young females and males, Ayna Abi aims at children viewers with its
emphasis and “zooming” on child characters. Evidently, I have tried to ask some
children some questions like did you watch Ayna Abi? As quickly as I finished my
question, they started very innocently telling me about the whole soap’s content from
its beginning to end; really I was shocked and surprised. How can a soap opera affect
children to that maximum? What is its magic or bate to make children its main
viewers? It is first the language which persuades children to viewing as they could
easily fathom its ‘storylines’ in addition to its incorporation of child-characters.
Children started to identify easily with the two main child-characters; Frihkolito, with
whom he is obsessed with getting knowledge of who is his father, and Tonio, the
other child who is searching for his mother. Children are not aware of the social
dilemma in which characters are entangled searching for one of their parents, but
innocently they identify with their funny, amiable and kindhearted characters.

So, the questions that remain here, is it possible to talk about the return of local
dialects after the domination of standardized Arabic? And can we anticipate a dubbed
Amazigh soaps with the later establishment of an Amazigh channel in addition to the
Arab-speaking channels? These are open questions that are open for debate.