Self-Translation: Faithful Rendition or Rewriting in Gibran's the Prophet

Abstract

This study aims at investigating the act of self-translation and whether it is a faithful rendition or a rewriting process. The study examined a self-translated book from English into Arabic called the Prophet by the famous American Lebanese author, Gibran Khalih Gibran. This study aims to investigate the true nature of Self-Translation practice whether it is an adequate translation or a rewriting of the original version. This self-translation is examined in light of what alterations and changes are done by the writer/translator, and to which extent the translator is faithful to his source text (English version). Twenty examples were selected from Gibran's the Prophet and were compared to their translation in the Arabic version. These examples include words, phrases, sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs. The data were analyzed according to the Discourse Analysis (DA) Theory, especially based on linguistic and semantic perspectives. Further, the examples from both versions were compared and the differences were highlighted and discussed. The study finds that Gibran was translating rather than rewriting into Arabic. Keywords: Self-Translation, Faithful, Rendition, Rewriting, Gibran, the Prophet.