Cultural problems in the translation of Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Sadaawy

الملخص EN

This study attempts to analyze the strategies adopted by Jonathan Wright in his translation of Saadawi's novel, Frankenstein in Baghdad (2013), from a cultural approach.

It claims that Wright's translation, in Newmark's terms, is “communicative” in nature, since it focuses much on the transfer of the verbal message of the source text.

As this study argues, Wright's translation is mostly concerned with its target reader.

In terms of culture, Wright employs many strategies according to whether the receiving culture has the same equivalents.

Consequently, it will demonstrate the influence of such strategies on the process of translating Saadawi's novel.

Wright's translation provides the cultural equivalent whenever possible.

However, since the Arabic and English languages belong to two distant cultures, cultural loss seems to be inevitable in translation, especially in translating literary works.

Therefore, this study will analyze Wright's translation strategies employed to transfer the cultural markers, or the culture-specific items, in Saadawi's novel, which constitute its cultural identity.

In so doing, this study will provide an inventory of the cultural losses in Wright's translation.

These losses will be categorized using Hanada AL-Masri's taxonomy of cultural losses according to the kind of change they cause to the source text.