Translating historical and religious texts from Arabic into English : problems and solutions

Abstract EN

This study aimed at investigating the linguistic and cultural problems that Jordanian graduate students face in rendering historical and religious texts from Arabic into English ; exploring the causes of these problems and presenting solutions and recommendations to lessen these difficulties.

To achieve the goals of this study, the researchers conveniently selected a sample that compromised 20 graduate students who were enrolled in the M.A.

program in the Middle East University during the first semester 2012 / 2013.

The researchers designed a translation test that consisted of six historical and religious Arabic texts which were taken from Professor Younis Amr’s book “ القدس، مدينة الله ”.

They also conducted informal open-ended interviews with students and experts in the field of translation to compile more information.

Results of the study revealed various linguistic and cultural problems that graduate students faced such as encountering structural, stylistic, lexical, punctuation errors and cultural terms, i.

e.

proper-noun equivalents.

Results also indicated that these problems were caused by (1) some differences between the source and target linguistic systems ; (2) lack of awareness of the importance of the context in translation ; (3) students’ ignorance of cultural equivalences ; (4) adopting improper translation methods ; and (5) misusing dictionaries and other research tools, like Google translation.