The impact of compensation in translating classical Arabic poetry into English : an analytical study

Abstract EN

Translating classical Arabic poetry into English is inevitably problematic.

This is due to the uniqueness and exclusiveness of the word and form of the Arabic poetry on the one hand, and to the great gap between the two languages on the other hand.

Some translators adopt compensation as a strategy to overcome many difficulties of meaning loss in translating such type of texts.

The current analytical study attempts to show the impact of using compensation in translating Muallaqat Emro' Al- Qais into English by adopting Hervey & Higgins' (1992) model.

The study ends with some concluding remarks, the most important one among them is that compensation in not necessarily an effective strategy.

On the contrary, it could lead to deepening the unfamiliarity and loss of the semantic precision of the ST in the TT.