The search for ethnic identity in Suheir Hammad's born Palestinian, born black with reference to translation

Abstract EN

This paper tackles a critical issue nearly most Arwho, are forced to live outside their own countries as exiles, are concerned with.

It is the issue of identity which also represents a problem for ethnic and minority groups.

Being an Arab-American exile poet, Hammad experiences the suffering of living as a minority member in a discriminating society with different norms and culture.

Since Hammad has many things in common with minority groups, like the African-American group, she likes rap poetry as a means of resisting discrimination showed by American society.

The study aims at presenting the problem of identity, namely ethnic, which fluctuates between 'self' and 'other' and how can this be highlighted in translation.

The study hypothesizes that for the purpose of reflecting identity problem in the target text, a translator must be fully aware of the context of situation in which these poems are written.

Furthermore, content-focused translations are supposed to highlight identity references more than form-focused translations do.

One of the conclusions the study comes out with is that the search for identity, namely ethnic identity, is well manifested in Hammad's Born Palestinian, Born Black at three levels: lexical, syntactical and rhetorical.