Cultural and Linguistic Translation of The Gift of the Magi: A Comparative Study of Arabic and English Renderings

Abstract

This work aims to investigate the problems and related strategies involved in the cultural and translational adaptation of O. Henry's short tale, "The Gift of the Magi." It focuses on problems within the realms of cultural and contextual translation, taking special notice of discrepancies within cultural systems, use of idioms, and text structure. Its overriding objective remains the analysis of how translators mediate the tension between being loyal to the literal sense of the original text on the one hand, and rendering the text intelligible to readers of diverse cultural contexts, yet still project the thematic richness and style-emotive tone of the original work. By using a qualitative approach, the study borrows on translated texts in the form of Arabic and English texts, with the use of semi-structured interviews on professional translators. The results suggest that tactics like cultural adaptation, paraphrasing, and dynamic equivalence are commonly employed in dealing with problems related to cultural allusions, syntactic irregularities, and use of idioms. Translators admit challenges like the maintenance of the original work’s integrity as well as the need to be clear to the intended viewers. The study highlights the translator's mediatory role between linguistic systems as well as between cultural systems, while underlining the existing tension between creating translations that are highly source-text congruent on one level, yet others intended to facilitate deepened reader understandability.