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العنوان
Dethronement of the Original Text in Rendering Arabic Culture-Specific Poetry:
المؤلف
Al-Kholy, Al-Shaymaa Salah Al-Sayed Muhammad.
هيئة الاعداد
باحث / Al-Shaymaa Salah Al-Sayed Muhammad Al-Kholy
مشرف / Khaled Mahmoud Tawfik
مشرف / Gehan Shafie El-Margoushy
مناقش / Gehan Shafie El-Margoushy
تاريخ النشر
2019.
عدد الصفحات
225 P. :
اللغة
الإنجليزية
الدرجة
الدكتوراه
التخصص
اللغة واللسانيات
تاريخ الإجازة
1/1/2019
مكان الإجازة
جامعة عين شمس - كلية البنات - قسم اللغة الانجليزية
الفهرس
Only 14 pages are availabe for public view

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Abstract

Culture-specific poetry is a kind of poetry that abounds in culture-specific terms and images for which the translators always face the problem of finding suitable equivalents. Basically, poetry abounds in aesthetic features which are represented in the musicality of the chosen words along with the metaphorical language which has its own world of meanings and connotations. Moreover, poetry expresses the poet’s personal feelings, inner thoughts and imagination which are all subjected to different interpretations. Even native speakers of the language in which the poem is composed find it difficult to reach exactly what the poet wants to transmit through his poem. Here, the translators may create a natural native-like translation of the original poem in order to get over the culture-specific images and bridge the time-place gap between the original poem and its translation. They may add, substitute, rephrase or even delete certain cultural images of the original poem to guarantee understanding across these different cultures and to produce on the target reader an impact similar to that produced by the original one. The journey of translation, thus, ends up with a “reframed” translated poem “adapted” for a different readership and the translated poem is often interpreted within a new cultural setting different from that of the original. The study, thus, handles the problem of “dethroning” (Vermeer, 1984) the original text in rendering culture-specific poetry from Arabic into English. In translation, dethronement means that the translator disregards the source text producing a new text that has very little or even nothing in common with the original in order to meet the expectations of the target readers.
Objectives of the Study
This study aims at identifying the cultural values of Arabic poetry to know whether they can faithfully be conveyed into English, explaining how the translators bridge the gaps between Arabic and English cultures by determining and exploring the translation procedures that have been employed in the process of translation, finding out whether these cultural elements have been domesticated (i.e. changed) or foreignized (i.e. retained) based on the type of the translation procedure used by the translator, clarifying to which extent the translated poems are reframed in a new narrative setting and how Arabic culture-specific poetry is dethroned when it is renarrated into English and establishing the criteria that translators should fulfill in rendering Arabic culture-specific poetry into English.
Research Questions
In line with the aforementioned objectives, the following questions are raised to be answered by this study:
1- What are the challenges faced by the translators in renarrating culture-specific poetry from Arabic into English?
2- To what extent does the English translated poem faithfully convey the cultural and aesthetic features of the original Arabic one?
3- What are the main procedures used in reframing the narratives of the poets in a new cultural narrative (i.e. from Arabic into English)?
4- To what extent does the translator play a role in the process of renarration?
5- What are the criteria that should be followed when Arabic culture-specific poetry is rendered into English?
The Data of Analysis
The data utilized in this study are some selected texts collected from different Arabic culture-specific poems along with their English translations. These poems are:
1- Two of the seven odes of love or /al-Mu’allaqāt as-sab،/ المعلقات السبع, pre-Islamic poems translated into English by Desmond O’Grady (1997).The two odes are called by their poets’ names: Mu’allaqa of Imru’al-Qays and that of Tarafa.
2- Al-Busiri’s “Burda” بردة البوصيريa Sufic poem translated into English by Thoraya Mahdi Allam (1987).
3- Some modern poetic collections composed in the three periods of the modern era, they are:
a. Hafez Ibrahim’s “Describing a Suit” وصف كساء translated by christopher Tingley, Jayyusi and christopher Middleton (1987).
b. Omar Abu Risha’s “An Eagle” نسر, translated into English by Issa J. Boullata and Thomas G. Ezzy (1987).
c. Nazik al-Mala’ika’s “Love Song for Words” أغنية حب للكلمات, translated into English by Matthew Sorenson and christopher Middleton (1987).
Methodology
This study adopts a descriptive analytical approach to the analysis of the selected texts. Such texts are analyzed qualitatively by describing and examining the process of translation where the target texts are cross-culturally compared with their originals to see whether the Arabic culture is faithfully represented in the target text. It is beyond doubt that the translator always confronts many challenging cultural elements which necessitate the use of particular procedures in order to preserve both the intended meaning and effect. Here, these procedures and strategies are deduced and analyzed according to the selected translational theories.
The study, therefore, applies Venuti’s (1995) dichotomy of domestication and foreignization to draw a clear and direct comparison of the procedures that have been employed by the translators of the selected poems. The study also follows the applicable classification of the variety of translation procedures provided by Newmark (1988). To approach the selected data, skopos and narrative theories are used as the tools of the study. Combining both theories enriches the study and makes the analysis more comprehensive because of the cultural approach implied in the two theories. Skopos theory helps in examining to what extent the English translation achieves its goal. Narrative theory helps in exploring the reasons behind the use of some procedures and strategies that could be observed by comparing the renarrated texts in light of their originals.
Chapterization
This study is made up of six chapters: Chapter one is an introductory chapter that provides the background of the study including the problem, objectives, questions and its significance. Chapter two is devoted to the exploration of the specific nature of poetry, focusing on the different components of figurative language used in poetry. Then, a brief account of Arabic poetry that represents the Arabic culture ranging from the pre-Islamic era till the modern age is given. Together, examples from Arabic poetry are given to establish how the selected texts abound in cultural values. Chapter three relates poetry with translation theory and places the study into its related literature. As for the methodology implemented in this study, it is clarified in Chapter four where the data collection, the tools and procedures of data analysis are described. Chapter five handles the practical part where the analysis of the selected Arabic poetic texts and their English counterparts is conducted. The researcher has also suggested translation for the data excerpted for analysis. Chapter six sums up the main conclusion based on the findings this study has reached by the analysis. It also provides answers to the study questions, and clarifies the limitation of the current study, giving recommendations and suggestions for further research.
Conclusion
The analysis has revealed that domesticating translation procedures such as naturalization, cultural substitution and functional equivalent have consistently been applied for the vast majority of cultural categories while foreignization translation procedures have hardly been exploited. Accordingly, certain losses have evidently been caused by adopting these domesticating procedures since the cultural background of the original poem has been sacrificed for the sake of the target language reader. Even if domesticating procedures help in creating sensational effects and pleasure similar to those in the original, the target language reader is deprived of knowing about the culture values of the original.
The study has also guided the researcher towards suggesting some criteria that should be followed when Arabic culture-specific poetry is rendered into English. These criteria may be of help in determining which translation strategy and procedure should be used, they are:
1- The purpose which the translator wants to achieve in the poem involved in translation is the first criterion by which translation decision is guided. A theory like skopos offers a solution by giving priority to the purpose of translation in order to produce a functionally adequate target poem according to the contextual factors which include the culture of both the original poem and the target one. These contextual (i.e. cultural) factors determine which method or strategy is to be employed in the translation process. The function or purpose of the translation allows the translator to swing between the two main strategies of domestication and foreignization.
2- Another criterion is the type of the cultural term or image; in the sense that it may be either only conceptualized or totally absent in the target language (i.e. Arabic-specific). In this case, the intended meaning could be conveyed through the balanced employment of different procedures. For instance, for those which are conceptualized in the target language—functionally having the same connotations of the original—cultural substitution might be useful to apply where the source language cultural terms are replaced with the target language ones. Those which are totally absent in the target language, a domesticating procedure such as paraphrasing along with a foreignized procedure such as adding notes could be adequate to convey the intended meaning, and at the same time to enrich the target text with the added cultural values of the source language. What is also noteworthy is the fact that proper names such as names of places, persons, mountains, horses, etc., do not have counterparts in the target language. So, transferring proper names into the target text by only transliteration—if they are “transparent” (i.e. they are well-known by the target readers in the target context)—would be adequate. Otherwise transliteration should be supported by an explanation or notes such as endnotes, footnotes or glosses.