Handling Semantic Repetition when Translating Arabic Short Stories: The Case of Excerpt from The Book of The Dead

Amer Al-Adwan,Mamon Abuorabialedwan

doi:10.17576/3l-2019-2502-04

Abstract

The translation of literary texts into another language is undoubtedly a challenging task, especially when dealing with a combination of languages that are linguistically, stylistically and culturally different. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the translation of one of the devices of creative writing used in the construction of Arabic short stories, namely semantic repetition. The analysis is based on comparing the occurrences of semantic repetition in the Arabic short story صفحة من كتاب الموتى Excerpt from The Book of The Dead with their translations in the target text. This literary work, by Ahmad Faqih, has been selected for analysis mainly because it contains a significant number of repetition instances that serve various pragmatic functions. The main concepts and aspects of Toury’s theory of norms and other taxonomies of translation strategies will be used to identify translation shifts and strategies adopted by the translators. The analysis reveals that the translators resorted to four main strategies when translating semantic repetition into English: retention, compression, grammatical shift and deletion. The analysis also reveals that instances of semantic repetition are often omitted or modified in the English translation, and consequently their functions are sacrificed. This will certainly affect the representation of the original literary work and offer the target readers a slightly different version of the text. Keywords: Semantic repetition; literary translation; translation norms; Arabic short stories; translation strategies

Highlights

The notion of norms has been frequently utilised to describe and analyse translated texts in various languages
Translation norms could be successfully employed as a tool to scrutinize and analyse translations of different text types, and shed light on the factors that would govern the selection of the texts to be translated, the decisions made by translators and any changes introduced to the target text
After scrutinising the short story Excerpt from The Book of The Dead and its English translation, it is evident that semantic repetition, which is one of the salient features of this literary work, communicates a range of different pragmatic functions, such as expressing emphasis, emotions, exaggeration and so forth

Summary

Introduction

The notion of norms has been frequently utilised to describe and analyse translated texts in various languages. ―norms can be expected to operate in translation of all kinds, and at every stage in the translating event, and to be reflected on every level of its product‖ Translation norms could be successfully employed as a tool to scrutinize and analyse translations of different text types, and shed light on the factors that would govern the selection of the texts to be translated, the decisions made by translators and any changes introduced to the target text. The available literature on various aspects of Arabic-English literary translation is still scarce, as the common direction of translation is predominantly the opposite.

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion