Abstract
This article presents an experimental analysis of the quality of linguocultural adaptation in Russian and Kazakh dubbing of the film “Maleficent”. An online survey of 766 respondents showed that viewers evaluate dubbing quality comprehensively, paying equal attention to translation accuracy, voice acting, sound clarity, and synchronization of speech with the characters’ lip movements. The majority of respondents (84.9%) prefer the foreignization strategy and positively perceive the preservation of the original national coloring and pragmatic potential in translation. An evaluation of selected “Maleficent” film fragments by 50 members of a student film club revealed differences in the linguocultural adaptation strategies employed in two dubbed versions. The Russian dubbing is primarily oriented towards domestication (an average score 4.7 out of 5), ensuring high stylistic expressiveness and familiarity of perception by replacing realia and idioms with more recognizable Russian counterparts. The Kazakh dubbing, on the contrary, adopts foreignization (an average score 4.8 out of 5), more precisely preserving imagery, mythological concepts, and the fantasy atmosphere, thereby better meeting the expectations of a contemporary audience. The study also identified differences in rendering expressive vocabulary: the Kazakh translation tends to neutralize stylistically reduced units in accordance with national norms of speech etiquette, whereas the Russian version retains a higher degree of expressiveness. The research findings prove that high-quality dubbing is achieved by a flexible combination of domestication and foreignization strategies based on genre specific features, purpose of translation, cultural peculiarities, and target audience expectations.