Translation Strategies for Culture- Bound Expression in The Arabic Novel of Cities of Salt

Abstract

This study examines the strategies employed in rendering culture-bound expressions in in Abdulrahman Munif’s novel Cities of Salt (1984) as translated into English by Peter Theroux (1987). Culture- bound expressions, which includes reference to Arabic social practices, tradition, religion and history, poses a great challenge to the translator due the absence of exact equivalent between the two languages. Drawing upon theoretical model of Pedersen’s strategies of translation (2005), The study adopts a qualitative and descriptive approach. The study hypothesizes that Theroux employs a combination of TL and SL oriented strategies. To achieve this, twenty excerpts which contain a heavy cultural loaded expressions were selected from the ST along with English translation. They were analyzed to identify the strategies used in rendering cultural loaded expression. The study comes to conclusion that translating culture-bound expressions in Cities of Salt is problematic due to cultural gap between Arabic and English language. The translator’s knowledge of the SL and TL culture is a must. Insufficient knowledge of the source-language culture leads to a loss of cultural specificity in the target language, thereby resulting in deficiencies in the translation. The study highlights the complexity of translating these expressions and the balance a translation should maintain between persevering the cultural identity of the SL and producing accessible and natural TL text.