Conflicting Discourse of Foreignizing Informative Text: The Case of Kamal Abu Deeb's Translation of Orientalism

Abstract

As the title of this paper indicates, this work is concerned with the translation of Said's controversial book, Orientalism. It is a analytical study of extracts of Orientalism, as translated into Arabic by Kamal Abu Deeb (1995/1980), in relation to the difficulties that the translator encountered while dealing with this book. The reason that this translation is selected for discussion is that this translation concerned with one of the most controversial books in the world, which can be classified as a cultural (informative) text. The present study adds new insights to the body of theory and the effectiveness of the performance of translation from culture to culture. Therefore, it presents a survey that can provide the reader with an overview of Said's Orientalism and the Arabic translation of the book. It investigates some of the problems of translating cultural (informative) texts, more specifically translating features of Said's style. This will be done by exploring general cultural/linguistic dimensions through Venuti's model, "foreignization" and it's affect the translational product, and by looking at particular source text problems. Moreover, it is hoped that the analysis provided in this paper will make a positive contribution to a better understanding of the translation of cultural (informative) texts and be thought-provoking in terms of Translation Studies.To this aim, this study depends on the concept of stylistics to examine forms of mediation through the style of translating informative text like the Arabic translation of Edward Said's Orientalism. The features explored consist of the components of certain parts of Abu Deeb's translation. Some discursive strategies within the actual translation are also discussed, where relevant, as framing devices.