Translation of Arabic Idiomatic and Proverbial Expressions into French in Tahar Wattar’s Novels: The Fisherman and the Palace, The Ace and The Earthquake. Doctorat thesis,(2018) Université de Batna 2
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Date
2018-07-18
Authors
AGTI Abdelaziz
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Abstract
The present study focuses mainly on the investigation of the translation of Arabic idioms and proverbs into French to provide insight into the cross-cultural and cognitive linguistic processes of translation and the strategies used in the translation of idioms and proverbs extracted from the novels of Tahar Wattar: The Fisherman and the Palace, The Ace, The Earthquake and A Mule’s Wedding. The study aims at shedding light on some aspects of idioms and proverbs that may pose problems while translating from one language culture into another. Idioms and proverbs are identified in the original Arabic text, and put into the cultural categories suggested by Eugene Nida (1964: 91). Next, they are compared with their French counterparts and analysed from sociolinguistic, cognitive and rhetorical points of view. An attempt is made to identify the translation strategies most probably selected by the translators. Their effectiveness
is then dealt with in terms of producing equivalent idioms and proverbs, carrying the same cultural values, message and preserving stylistic features as the source language idioms and proverbs. The findings reveal that most of the translators encounter difficulties when translating idioms and proverbs with reference to their cultural values, metaphorical aspects and stylistic features. The most frequent strategy used to deal with idioms and proverbs is literal translation. Translation by equivalence occupies the second position. The third strategy is translation by paraphrasing. The last position is occupied by combination strategy ( literal translation and paraphrasing ). On the basis of the findings of this study, related to the fact that it is this culture specific, metaphorical and stylistic nature of idioms and proverbs that makes them unmanageable for translators, it is recommended that, in addition to having enough knowledge related to translation theory and translation strategies, a translator needs to have intercultural competence to manage to handle the challenging task of transferring idioms and proverbs from one culture into another.