The foreignization of Khirbet Masood and the domestication of Masood's Ruin in translation challenges

Abstract

The research paper aims to translate the first three chapters of the novel entitled Khirbet Masood and written by the contemporary novelist, Professor Mansour Eid (1944-2013), from Arabic to English. The translation process attempts to bridge both the Arabic and the English versions by rendering typically the same meaning knowing that the writer’s writing style is the “apparent ease” “السهل الممتنع” which is clear and flowing; nevertheless, it is inimitable. Moreover, this paper tackles the various difficulties the translator encountered during the translation process; these difficulties include the reflection of Lebanese cultural values in order to help the English reader understand the sectarian conflicts in a lifelong sectarian society, the sufferings that Lebanese people encountered during the Lebanese war in their homeland, their migration struggles, and their patriotic love to their Phoenix homeland. It also studies the mechanism of translation based on theories related to cultural translations such as Vinay and Darbelnet’s theory (mostly borrowing, modulation, equivalence, and adaptation methods_, Nida’s theory (dynamic equivalence method), and Newmark’s (communicative method). Finally, the paper sheds light on the difficulties the translator faced during the translation process with respect to different aspects such as the translation of the apparent ease style السهل الممتنع, the transliteration of proper nouns, the translation of Lebanese folkloric songs using Danica Seleskovitch and Marianne Lederer’s interpretive model of translation, the translation of non-Classical Arabic/Spoken Lebanese, and finally the layout style of the target text.