Difficulties of Arabic-English Translation of Dysphemistic Orthophemistic and Euphemistic Expressions

Abstract

This study deals with the translation of some Libyan Arabic cultural expressions. It presents a discussion of social, cultural x-phemizing expressions that are extracted from a novel titled " واالضرد ار ", "Valley of Ashes". The novel is written by Ahmad Ibrahim Al-Faqih, a Libyan-Arab novelist. This study focuses on the translatability of the cultural expressions and the difficulties that may face the translator when rendering the original x-phemistic terms and expressions. Also, it focuses on how the translator succeeds at sometimes and fails at others. The researcher hypothesizes that translators often ignore translating some cultural aspects of the original text due to the difficulties or they omit some cultural expressions due to their richness with cultural concepts. This study will be based on Molina (2002) techniques of translation as the frame of reference and the researcher compares between the original and the translated x-phemized terms and expressions, then suggested some solutions for appropriate translation techniques. It attempts to find out the more acceptable procedure to achieve an effective cultural expression of the original. The data is collected and classified in accordance with whether each expression is dysphemistic orthophemistic and/or euphemistic. The data is discussed depending on the translation techniques used by the translator. The researcher attempts to find out whether the translation techniques used in each x-phemistic expression is appropriate and gives the intended meaning. The study concluded that some translation techniques are not effective in translating cultural expressions.