Article,
Hindrances in Arabic-English Intercultural Translation
The Translation Journal, (2008)
Abstract
Translation as a paradigm of cultural contact is not as clear a concept as it might seem to be. In the last 30 years, the field has expanded considerably towards a macro-level, encompassing the cultural context as a whole. Most recent theories in social linguistics raise the question of intercultural translation; they mean hermeneutic issues rather than the problems of faithfulness. Contemporary cultural orientation deals with the relationship between knowledge production, in one culture, and the same information being transferred and interpreted in another. As a level of interaction, cultural translation takes place whenever an alien experience is internalized and rewritten in the culture where the experience is received. However, it is often found out by theorists that there is always a gap, a point that is difficult to be culturally transmitted into the target culture. This paper is concerned with the cultural hindrances in Arabic-English translation. Intercultural translation here can help people understand better the alien cultural elements as long as competent translators keep trying to overcome these hindrances, which are related to the field of translation.
