The English translation of Kināyah ᶜan ṣiƒah "metonymy of an attribute" in selected prophetic Hadiths

Abstract EN

Metonymy is a linguistic phenomenon that is an essential part in all cultures.

Therefore, the present study aims at discussing metonymy in general and analyzing the translation of Kināyah ᶜan ṣiƒah (metonymy of an attribute) in Khan’s translation (1997) of Ṣaḥiḥ Al-Bukhārῑ in particular, to examine the impact of translating metonymy on producing an effective and rhetorical language.

Besides, it attempts to identify to what extent metonymy is rendered accurately and intelligibly into the target language, i.e.

English.

The data collected consists of 31 metonymic expressions in the Prophetic Hadiths.

The selected metonymies are identified and analyzed in accordance with the translation at hand.

Furthermore, the current study adopts Toury’s source-oriented translation (1995) in translating metonymy that prioritizes the taste of the original culture.

Since the target readers are non-Arab Muslims, this implies that aim of translation is to observe the highly metonymic style of the Prophetic sayings in order not to sacrifice part of the metonymic meanings and to enrich the target language both linguistically and culturally; in turn, gain close access to the linguistic features and customs of the source language.

The source-oriented approach is recommended here so as to maintain the cultural input of the source language, i.e.

Arabic, in an attempt to circumvent the peculiarities of the source text.