Assessing the Arabic Translation of Selected Walt Disney Bedtime Stories (2014): A Pragma-Stylistic Approach

Abstract

Every translation process should be guided by “a communicative purpose of the source text which is supposed to be fulfilled in the target text” (Nord, 2006, p.44). This paper seeks to examine the role of the pragmatic analysis in assessing the quality of the translation process by formulating a tripartite model. This model combines the pragmatic analysis and two functional translation models, which are Nord (1997) and House (2015) to tackle the translation quality assessment. Specifically, this paper assesses the Arabic translation of one bedtime short stories selected from children’s Disney book, 365 Bedtime Stories (2014). The researcher applies a pragma-stylistic framework along with two functional translation models to measure the quality assessment of the target texts and minimize the gap between the two cultures in the source and the target texts of children's literature. Consequently, the study provides further suggestions for the translation gaps and errors which are found in the translated target texts by applying Baker's (2011) and Van Coillie's (2006) strategies. This paper tests the validity of the proposed model to perform a pragma-stylistic model that helps in the translation quality assessment to classify the translation errors and offer solutions that can be used in any children’s literature.