Translation Quality Assessment of Literary Texts: A Critical Analysis of Two Recent Arabic Translations of Orwell's Animal Farm (1945)

Abstract

This article aims to assess and evaluate the quality of two recent Arabic translations of George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945), the first one by Mohammed Hasan Alawi (2019) and the second one by Hiba Fathi (2020) using House's (2015) Translation Quality Assessment model. A mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative methods was employed. The qualitative method involved conducting a comparative analysis between the profiles of the source text and the two translations employing House's model (2015) to identify mismatches at the register parameter. The quantitative method was employed to quantify the overtly erroneous errors and determine whether statistically significant differences exist in the mean number of these errors between the two translations. The findings of the study show numerous mismatches, particularly at the three dimensions of register (field, tenor, and mode) which to some extent affected the ideational and interpersonal components of the textual function in both translations. The findings also indicate statistically significant differences between the two translations in terms of the frequency of overtly erroneous errors. The second translation exhibited a higher number of such errors compared to the first translation, primarily resulting from the breach of the target language system. The study concluded that the second translation was less adequate compared to the first translation.