SCRIPTING THE SCREEN: MULTIDIMENSIONAL VARIATION IN URDU-TO-ENGLISH SUBTITLES – A CASE STUDY OF ‘AAS PAAS’

Abstract

The exponential increase in the media consumption of South Asia on international digital platforms has led to a critical need to understand the linguistic mechanisms that are indicative of cross-cultural transmission of narratives. In response to this, this study is a comprehensive Multi-Dimensional (MD) Analysis of the English subtitles of the Pakistani Urdu Drama, Aas Paas (2025). The aim is to outline the lexico - grammatical profile of this particular audiovisual translation register. A Python-based corpus analysis tool was used to create a corpus of 148,288 words consisting of the 32-episode files, then computational feature extraction and factor analysis were used. Drawing upon Biber's (1988) seminal framework for register variation, the research identifies five functional dimensions of variation in the subtitle corpus: (1) syntactic complexity versus simplified orality; (2) informational density versus interactive inquiry; (3) stylistic elaboration versus fragmented coordination; (4) descriptive density; and (5) lexical sophistication. The results expose a "hybrid register" that structurally imitates the syntactic density of written fiction but pragmatically retains the interactive volatility of face-to-face conversation. Specifically, the analysis reveals a high level of nominalisation and verbal complexity in segments with narrative-heavy style - probably an artefact of explicating the translation - and pronoun-heavy, fragmented discourse in scenes of conflict between Pakistanis, in line with Pakistani English norms. By plotting these dimensions against the story's development of the drama, the research shows how linguistic variation is a proxy for thematic changes between the professional and domestic spheres that are intrinsic to the plot. The research is essential to corpus linguistics, translation studies, and South Asian media studies, as it provides a quantitative multidimensional profile of the Urdu-English subtitles register.