Translation of Culture-Specific Terms from Arabic into English Between Loss and Preservation

Abstract

Undoubtedly, translation is one of the oldest means of communication and a bridge connecting various cultures. In this sense, it stands as an effective tool for intercultural communication. Be it through written literary works or media outlets, translation is unarguably listed as one of the best communication channels. Thus, the present paper tackles the problematic issue that translators encounter while translating some culture-specific words or expressions from Arabic into English. A huge gap between the SL and TL may lead to more difficulties to transfer the message. The difference between Arabic and English in linguistic structures and discrepancies in their cultures sometimes make the process of translation a real challenge. Translation, of course, is not an easy task, but it requires a skilled and knowledgeable translator to make it right. In this paper, the primary concern is to shed light on the issue of culturally-specific terms that may generate obstacles for the translator, as well as to see to what extent these obstacles may affect the translation process. Certain translation strategies and methods that are proposed by some theorists are also addressed as remedy solutions for highly challenging culture-specific words or expressions following the model of Newmark (1988) and Aixela (1996). The paper concluded that possessing a cultural background of the source text can be extremely useful in cases of cultural-complexity translation.