Luís wrote:I'm curious, when foreign movies are dubbed into Arabic, do they use MSA or dialects? (in which case there might be several versions)
It seems to be pretty complicated.
I get the impression that most foreign media content that's dubbed into Arabic is broadcast by the
Middle East Broadcasting Center or MBC, a Saudi company but with its headquarters in Dubai. My understanding is that there is a lot of pressure from Arabic-speakers themselves to use MSA in dubbing foreign media, and apparently, Disney has chosen to dub
Frozen for this reason in MSA rather than in Egyptian (I think Cairene?) Arabic like their other movies. Latin American telenovelas are also dubbed in MSA. However, not only Disney movies but also
The Simpsons (for example) are dubbed in Egyptian Arabic. Turkish TV serials are dubbed in very slow but clear Damascene Arabic, and according to what I seem to remember from The Arabic Student (though I can't find the exact page), they're a useful resource if you're learning that variety and want to improve your listening comprehension. Bollywood movies are dubbed in Kuwaiti Arabic, and Korean dramas are dubbed in Hijazi Arabic; both of these choices are highly unpopular even among native speakers of these varieties.
Here's a paper on this stuff if you're interested:
http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.c ... 203.11.pdf.
When I was growing up, Malayalam movies were very commonly subtitled in MSA and sometimes also in English. At points when the dialogue itself was in English, subtitles would only be displayed in MSA. Unfortunately, movies at the time did a really bad job of displaying the subs because they were almost always in faded yellow or white print that all too frequently blended into the background. Here's an example where the subtitles (exclusively in MSA) seem barely legible at all, and I'm pretty sure the subtitle for the first line is just gibberish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_1KKXofSSU