Localising Combat Ethics in Arabic: Narrative Framing, Martial Register, and Cultural Resonance in Assassin’s Creed Mirage

Abstract

This article examines how the Arabic localisation of Assassin’s Creed Mirage renders the franchise’s three Creed tenets and whether its lexical and rhetorical choices can be interpreted through furūsiyya and Islamic virtue ethics (akhlāq). Using a focused qualitative design, it aligns the complete English and Arabic formulations of “Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent,” “Hide in plain sight,” and “Never compromise the Brotherhood,” and analyses semantic content, rhetorical form, interpersonal meaning, ethical evaluation, register, and multimodal function. The findings show semantic continuity across all three tenets. Two contain limited lexical or grammatical modulation, but none adds an unambiguous moral principle or uses unmistakably religious or classical terminology. The Arabic version nevertheless shapes the localised experience through Modern Standard Arabic register, generic reference, rhythm, and its interaction with the game’s ninth-century Baghdad setting. Furūsiyya and akhlāq therefore provide productive interpretive horizons only when supported by marked language, recurrent patterns, historical evidence, and multimodal context. Ordinary contemporary martial vocabulary cannot by itself establish direct historical intertextuality. The article proposes a graded evidential model that distinguishes textual shift, contextual resonance, recurring pattern, production intention, and player reception, offering a more accountable method for culturally informed game-localisation research within translation studies.