English –Arabic Translation of Culture-Specific Items in Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account: A Textual Analysis

Abstract

The main aim of this study is analyse how culture-specific items (henceforth CSIs), metaphors and idioms are translated from English into Arabic. The corpus of this study subsumes Laila Lamai’s The Moor’s Account and its Arabic version Ma Rawahu Al Maghribi "مارواه المغربي"  translated by Nouf Al-Maymouni. Methodologically speaking, this study is based on a bunch of theories, namely Postcolonial Theory, Derrida’s deconstruction, and Hans Vermeer and Katharina Reiss’s Skopos Theory. In analysing thus novel, Document analysis Protocol is followed (see Appendix). It entails extracting CSIs from the source text and the target text and classifying them in an inventory according to Peter Newmark’s cultural categories. Eirlys Davies’ (2003) taxonomy for the translation of CSIs is applied so as to identify the micro-strategies that were adopted by the translator. Idioms and metaphors are also classified in an inventory and Mona Baker’s (2018) taxonomy for the translation of idioms is applied.  Lawrence Venuti’s macro-strategies of foreignization and domestication are applied as well.