الفهرس 
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Abstract
The primary aim of the study is to investigate the strategy of normalization in translating Arabic literary prose into English. A secondary aim is to relate the findings to the implication normalization might have on translated Arabic literary texts and their position in the English literary polysystem. This is with the aim to either refute or verify the notion that the degree the text is normalized largely depends on the position and importance of the translated text in the TL; i.e. the higher the position of the text the lesser the degree of normalization. Therefore, the corpus of the study is carefully selected to include four novels; two novels translated before the Nobel Prize awarded to Mahfouz; i.e. زقاق المدق Midaq Alley and الشحاذ the Beggar and two after; i.e. بين القصرين Palace Walk and ثرثرة فوق النيل Adrift on the Nile. This will hopefully outline whether the cultural impetus enjoyed by Arabic literature after the prize had an impact on the adoption of the strategy of normalization in rendering such literature into English. Following van Leuven-Zwart’s model (1989/1990) of detecting shifts in translation, and consistent with the approach to normalization adopted in the present study – which focuses on the downplay of the ST markedness or creativity in the TT – the study attempts to investigate whether ST marked or creative features are normalized or not in the TT. Downplaying or conventionalizing such features is considered evidence to the strategy of normalization. The findings of the study show that normalization is present on every textual level. For example, on the semantic level, it manifests in downplaying the transference of the ST culture specific items and flattening ST marked collocational patterns and creative imagery. On the syntactic level, normalization could be detected in normalizing shifts adopted in rendering ST untypical verb tenses, sentence length and punctuation anomalies. On the other hand, on the macrostructural level, the findings show that the writer’s marked narrative technique is to a great extent diluted by certain shifts on the microstructural level. The result is that the TT is rather a simplified text of the ST. Further, it may not be considered equivalent to the ST as a representative of the writer’s techniques and style. The study also shows that normalization is indeed a norm-governed strategy that might be affected by the prestige and the position enjoyed by the SL literature in the TL. This is verified by the fact that instances of normalization in the pre-Nobel translations are higher than those in the post-Nobel. This outlines how far normalization is affected by both cultural and social constraints.