A Cultural Based Pragmatic Approach for Analysing English – Arabic Dramatic Cultural References with Reference to Translation

Abstract

Translation of cultural references can be effective and beneficially achieve various purposes depending on how they are transferred into another language. Virtually, cultural references refer to any word with considerably conceptual effects used for influencing conventional and societal intents. However, cultural references that are relatively belonged to a certain language are not equally observed in culture of another language; they derive their significations from the cultural characteristics of a community. Wherefore, cultural significations suchlike conventions, aesthetic values, and doctrines which are directly concerned with bridging intents lose their intentional importance or even work the opposite in another language. The incompatibility of dramatic references in their stylization of functions will problematically bring unparalleled pragmatic conceptions in both languages. Therefrom, this study objectively aims at: comparing cultural references in both languages, their impacts, and the extents of their influences; testing the validity of the adopted translational procedures in resolving cultural mutual exclusiveness; setting out some translational strategies for overcoming cultural divergences and bringing closer the wide distances between languages. To conduct this, five dramatic texts are withdrawn from Neil Labute's play Reasons To Be Pretty with their four Arabic renditions to be the data of the current study. The results show that the sociocultural situation negatively influences in creating correspondence references in English – Arabic dramatic rendition. Additionally, the inexactness of adapted rendition strategies for the data under discussion that are imprecisely opted attributed varied degrees of untranslatability due to the connotative incompatibility of cultural references in both languages