The specialized translation of dialect: Translating the geographical Arabic dialect of Yazidis in Bashiqa into English-A case study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61856/bje5ym47Keywords:
Geographical Arabic Dialect of Bashiqa, Spontaneous Speech, Specialized Language, Specialized Translation of Dialect, Extratextual and Intratextual FactorsAbstract
Dialects typically have distinct pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar, in addition to the disfluencies of spontaneous speech when spoken. The translation of dialect is therefore a challenging undertaking. While research exists on the translation of literary dialect, studies on the translation of spoken dialect remain scarce. This paper aims to propose a strategy for translating the geographical Arabic dialect of Yazidis in Bashiqa. Twelve female Yazidis from Bashiqa were interviewed to talk about using wild plants in their region as cooking ingredients and natural remedies. In this paper, geographical dialect is seen as specialized language use that requires specialized translation into the target language identified on the basis of extratextual and intratextual factors, following Nord’s (2005) model of pre-translation text analysis. This descriptive case study employed the qualitative method to provide an account of a specific case within its real-life context. Having transcribed the interviews by a native speaker of Bashiqa who also knows Modern Standard Arabic, identified all the challenges, and applied Nord’s (2005) analysis, the researcher (i.e., the translator herself) found that the main function of the source text is informative, and translating its geographical Arabic dialect into informal Standard English is conceived as the most appropriate strategy that secures comprehensibility of its content by the English reader, whether that reader is native or non-native. This strategy was called “partial neutralization.” The study concluded that specialized translation of dialect refers to the translation of a specialized language use in which both the dialect transcriber and the dialect translator work together to produce a comprehensible version in the source language that is then translated using a guided translation strategy selected on the basis of translation-oriented source text analysis.
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