The Need for Domestication: An Annotated Translation of a Personal Development Text from English to Arabic

A Master of Arts Thesis in English / Arabic Translation and Interpreting by Mohamed El Shahed Entitled, "The Need for Domestication: An Annotated Translation of a Personal Development Text from English to Arabic," June 2005. Available are both Hard and Soft Copies of the Thesis.

Abstract

This work discusses problems related to the need to domesticate encountered during the translation of the prologue, introduction, and part of Chapter I of a book titled The Different Drums by American psychiatrist and spiritual writer M. Scott Peck. The translated text belongs to the 'spiritual growth and personal development' literature which has flourished in the West over the last 40 years and is beginning to make its presence felt in Arabic. This thesis concentrates on the domestication techniques followed in the translation process. It will also examine how domestication can play a vital role in preserving the intentionality of the source text. It aims at providing practical evidences from the field that domestication is inevitable in given translation situations. In the meantime, this option doesn't contradict with the tendency to maintain a sense of foreignness in the translated text.