Translating religious terms and culture in 'The Sealed Nectar' : a model for quality assessment
This is an applied study that critically analyzes the Arabic-English translation of a key cultural text: the biography of the Prophet Muhammad entitled The Sealed Nectar. It aims at assessing the translation to see how successful the translator was in composing an equivalent text to such a culture-specific one. The study adopts Juliane House's (1997) translation quality assessment model which is based on Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and relates texts to their situational and cultural contexts. In order to introduce a qualitative judgement of the work, the study enhances Houseâs model to make it applicable to culture-bound texts that call for overt translation. It introduces a consilience of: 1) Nordâs notion of culturemes; 2) Nidaâs categorization of cultural features to help in analyzing religious terms and culture; 3) Dickins et al.âs compensation strategies that show the translatorâs endeavor to balance the translation loss while dealing with such sensitive terms; 4) Martin and Whiteâs appraisal theory which explores attitudinal meaning and, hence, helps in investigating the translatorâs evaluation of these terms; and 5) Katanâs model that helps in highlighting the correlation between
AlGhamdi, Raja Saad
Translating religious terms and culture in 'The Sealed Nectar' : a model for quality assessment. This is an applied study that critically analyzes the Arabic-English translation of a key cultural text: the biography of the Prophet Muhammad entitled The Sealed Nectar. It aims at assessing the translation to see how successful the translator was in composing an equivalent text to such a culture-specific one. The study adopts Juliane House's (1997) translation quality assessment model which is based on Systemic Functional Linguistic theory and relates texts to their situational and cultural contexts. In order to introduce a qualitative judgement of the work, the study enhances Houseâs model to make it applicable to culture-bound texts that call for overt translation. It introduces a consilience of: 1) Nordâs notion of culturemes; 2) Nidaâs categorization of cultural features to help in analyzing religious terms and culture; 3) Dickins et al.âs compensation strategies that show the translatorâs endeavor to balance the translation loss while dealing with such sensitive terms; 4) Martin and Whiteâs appraisal theory which explores attitudinal meaning and, hence, helps in investigating the translatorâs evaluation of these terms; and 5) Katanâs model that helps in highlighting the correlation between
translating religious term culture the model quality assessment apply study critically analyze arabic_english_translation key cultural text biography prophet entitle aim_assess translation see successful translator compose equivalent text culture_specific study_adopts house translation_quality assessment model_base systemic functional linguistic theory relate texts situational cultural_context order introduce qualitative judgement work study enhances house model make applicable culture bound text call overt translation introduces nord notion categorization cultural feature help analyze religious term culture compensation strategy show translator endeavor balance translation loss deal sensitive term martin_white appraisal_theory explore attitudinal meaning hence help investigate translator evaluation term model help highlight correlation