The translator’s half visibility. A qualitative/quantitative study of culturespecific items in Said Khatibi’s “Hatabu Sarajevo” and its English version “Sarajevo Firewood” by Paul Starkey.

Abstract

This research paper examines the question of rendering Islamic items from Arabic into English. Based on an Algerian Arabic expression literary work and its newly published English version, the debatable issue revolves around the presentation of some culture-specific items in the source text and how they are rendered in the target language/culture. Using Venuti‟s foreignization and domestication model, and considering the new globalized writing and reading conditions, this qualitative study aims to highlight the frequency of these two main strategies in transferring words and expressions revealing the Islamic identity. The results reveal the translator‟s general tendency to keep a balance between the original‟s strangeness on the one hand, by using some extreme foreignization strategies like transcription, and on the other hand by turning the target reader‟s expression habits eminent by exploring different domestication strategies such as absolute universalization.

This research paper examines the question of rendering Islamic items from Arabic into English. Based on an Algerian Arabic expression literary work and its newly published English version, the debatable issue revolves around the presentation of some culture-specific items in the source text and how they are rendered in the target language/culture. Using Venuti‟s foreignization and domestication model, and considering the new globalized writing and reading conditions, this qualitative study aims to highlight the frequency of these two main strategies in transferring words and expressions revealing the Islamic identity. The results reveal the translator‟s general tendency to keep a balance between the original‟s strangeness on the one hand, by using some extreme foreignization strategies like transcription, and on the other hand by turning the target reader‟s expression habits eminent by exploring different domestication strategies such as absolute universalization.