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Article published In: FORUM
Vol. 22:1 (2024) ► pp.1–25

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Exploring normal vs. service translators’ orientation in rendering realia in The Holy Qur’an

 | University of IsfahanIsfahan
Published online: 25 April 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/forum.00033.afr
Abstract
Realia has always been thought of as a great challenge for translators. The native language and cultural background of a translator can be a factor potentially affecting the selection of equivalents and translation procedures. This paper aims to explore whether being a normal or a service translator would have any effect on adopting source- or target-oriented translation procedures. ‘Service translators’ are those who translate into a foreign language, while ‘normal translators’ are those who translate into their mother language. In other words, normal translators should be target-language native translators. The corpus includes the realia extracted from The Holy Qur’an and its four English translations by two service translators (Abdel-Haleem, M. A. S. 2005. The Qur’an: A new translation. Oxford World Classics, 2005.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar and Starkovsky, Nicholas. 2005. The Koran: An annotated translation. Algora Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and two normal translators (Arberry, Arthur John. 1955. [URL]. Available at [URL] and Abu Nasr, Al-Hajj Ta’lim Ali. 1985. The Qur’an: The first American translation. Available at [URL]). The data were analyzed on the basis of Liang, Wayne Wen-chun. 2016. “Translators’ behaviors from a sociological perspective: A parallel corpus study of fantasy fiction translation in Taiwan.” Babel 62 (1): 39–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar model. Findings revealed that the normal translators showed a slightly greater tendency (1%) towards source-oriented procedures than the service translators. On the other hand, target-oriented procedures adopted by the service translators exceeded those of the normal translators by 0.50%.
Résumé
La traduction des réalités culturelles (realia) a constamment été identifiée comme un défi majeur pour les traducteurs, en grande partie en raison de l’influence potentielle de la langue maternelle et du contexte culturel du traducteur sur le choix des équivalents et les stratégies de traduction adoptées. La présente étude vise à explorer l’impact de la nature du traducteur – soit en tant que traducteur “de service” (traduisant vers une langue étrangère) ou en tant que traducteur “normal” (traduisant vers sa langue maternelle) – sur la préférence pour des stratégies de traduction soit orientées vers la langue source, soit orientées vers la langue cible.
Pour cela, l’analyse s’est centrée sur les realia issues du Coran et de quatre de ses traductions en anglais, réalisées respectivement par deux traducteurs de service (Abdel-Haleem, M. A. S. 2005. The Qur’an: A new translation. Oxford World Classics, 2005.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar et Starkovsky, Nicholas. 2005. The Koran: An annotated translation. Algora Publishing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) et deux traducteurs normaux (Arberry, Arthur John. 1955. [URL]. Available at [URL] et Abu Nasr, Al-Hajj Ta’lim Ali. 1985. The Qur’an: The first American translation. Available at [URL]). La méthodologie s’appuie sur le modèle développé par Liang en 2016 pour examiner ces traductions.
Les résultats de cette étude ont mis en évidence une préférence légèrement plus marquée (1%) pour les stratégies orientées vers la langue source chez les traducteurs normaux, comparativement à leurs homologues traducteurs de service. Inversement, il est apparu que les stratégies orientées vers la langue cible étaient légèrement plus prédominantes (0.50%) chez les traducteurs de service que chez les traducteurs normaux. Cette recherche souligne ainsi la complexité et la subtilité des choix traductologiques en présence de realia, influencés tant par la direction de la traduction que par la proximité linguistique et culturelle du traducteur avec le texte source ou cible.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of the literature
    • 2.1Translating religious texts
    • 2.2Realia as culture-bound concepts
    • 2.3Directionality of translation
    • 2.4Normal vs. service translators
    • 2.5Previous studies
      • 2.5.1Previous studies on cultural concepts
      • 2.5.2Previous studies on directionality
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2A model for data analysis
  • 4.Data analysis
    • 4.1Qualitative data
      • 4.1.1Discussion of qualitative data
      • 4.1.2Main summary of qualitative data
    • 4.2Quantitative data
      • 4.2.1Results of quantitative data
      • 4.2.2Main summary of quantitative data
      • 4.2.3Discussion of quantitative data
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (72)
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