STRATEGIES FOR TRANSLATING WESTERN LITERATURE INTO ARABIC BETWEEN DOMESTICATION AND FOREIGNIZATION

Abstract

Translation is the core of human civilization. It consists in transferring texts from their original language to another making it perfectly harmonious in a foreign intellectual and cultural context, using methods and procedures that insure a translation as correct as possible. Considering the value of literature in constructing civilizations, we can clearly see that translation is as important as literature itself and even more. This is due to the fact that this later has always been an important factor in the prosperity and development of nations. In fact, literature is considered as the holder for people’s thoughts and culture, and a record of their history. Translating literary texts from a language to another is a difficult and challenging task not only because of their content, but also for the different styles, creative formats, and rhetoric used by the author. So, what are the difficulties that hinder the translator's work during the transfer of literary creativity? What kind of strategies should he choose to make a balance the forces attracting him while transferring foreign literature from Western languages to Arabic? Domestication or foreignization? And from there, we try in this paper to highlight some of the problems facing the literary translator, especially by observing and analyzing two Arabic translations by Hafiz Ibrahim and Munir Al-Baalbaki of the international French novel Les Miserables, entitled "strategies for translating Western literature into Arabic between domestication and foreignazation.