Towards a Bilingual Binational Translation Method: The Amputated Tongue Collection of Short Stories as a Sample

Abstract

Translators and writers are divided into two main groups regarding the method of translation that should be adopted in translating texts. One group believes that the translator should be true to the translated text, while the other group believes that the translator has the right to recreate the text into a more beautiful one.  This study deals with this issue from these two points of view and tries to answer the following questions: Why do we translate? What should we translate? How do we translate? The study relies on an innovative translation method developed by the Board of Maktoub Project for Translation that belongs to Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem to answer these questions. A group of about one hundred Arab and Jewish translators translated Arabic literature texts into Hebrew in an internationally new method, which is neither individual nor collective. It is a bilingual binational method. The translators consist of pairs of a Jewish or/and Arab translator, an Arab/or Jewish literary editor, and a linguistic editor, believing that translation is a text and culture, heritage, and traditions of a people or nation. This dual method gave the translated text its right of accuracy after it had been translated by one translator who can make mistakes due to his ignorance of the writer's culture. The study's conclusion confirms that bilingual binational translation is more fruitful and more accurate because it is based on dialogue, bilingual, and binational cultural knowledge.