Translation as Intercultural Communication: Translation and Commentary

A Master of Arts thesis in English/Arabic/English Translation and Interpreting (MATI) by Isra Al Saabri entitled, “Translation as Intercultural Communication: Translation and Commentary”, submitted in March 2021. Thesis advisor is Dr. Sattar Izwaini. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).

Abstract

This thesis is a translation of “Translation as Intercultural Communication” by David Katan, which comprises chapter five of The Routledge Companion to Translation Studies, edited by Jeremy Munday (2009). The translation is from English to Arabic, followed by a commentary that addresses challenges faced in the process of translating the chapter in terms of register and genre, with a focus on terminology. Newmark’s (1987) translation methods (such as literal and semantic translation procedures, and textual level) were followed as a guideline in the translation to deal with a scholarly/academic-type text. Sixteen terms were identified, arranged according to terms and their Arabic meanings/translations were looked up the Al Mawrid dictionary (2003). The translations of the terms were compared against those that would result following the methods of Newmark (1987), Baker (1992), Munday (2009) and other translation scholars and their strategies. Since the chapter chosen for translation in this thesis is a specialized scholarly/academic text, among the major challenges were factors such as finding appropriate equivalents and standardized terms in Arabic. The analysis of the translations of the sixteen terms showed that recording, studying and analyzing terms during the translation process enhances the quality of the translation.