This study examines the use of euphemisation as a politeness strategy in subtitling the American sitcom Friends into Arabic. It draws on core concepts of Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness, such as the notion of face, face-threatening acts and redressive strategies, to explain subtitlers' choices in rendering sequences which are potentially offensive to an Arab audience. The study sets out to examine the extent to which a modified and extended model of euphemisation as a strategic output of politeness can be productively applied in the field of audiovisual translation, and specifically to subtitling from English into Arabic. This involves a critical examination of the treatment of euphemisation in Brown and Levinson's theory in the first instance. A new and more eclectic model of euphemisation is then proposed. The new model draws mainly on two existing models developed outside politeness theory, by Williams (1975) and Warren (1992). To account for euphemistic expressions identified in the data and not covered by the categories proposed in Williams and Warren's studies, two further categories are introduced, namely, semantic misrepresentation and omission. Applying the new, extended model to the data enables the themes and topics most commonly euphemised in the Arabic subtitles to be identified. The model has also proved helpful in capturing recurrent strategies of euphemisation employed by Arab subtitlers in dealing with a range of face-threatening acts, especially sexual references and utterances related to certain distasteful topics such as death, disease and bodily functions