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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 69:2 (2023) ► pp.242–265

The Little Prince

A study of its translations into Hebrew and Arabic

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This paper studies translations of Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince into Hebrew and Arabic, genealogically related Semitic languages. The discussion in the paper focuses on three questions related to subjects already raised in the translation literature: What does the word count of any translated text contribute to translation study? How does comparing different translations of the same text into the same language contribute to translation research? Will translating one text into genealogically related languages reveal similarities between the translations? The research hypothesizes that (1) similarities and differences will be found between the translations, but (2) they will not affect target language rules. The main findings are that (1) total word sums were smaller in the translations than word sums in the source text. (2) The differences reflect the style and register considerations (formal versus daily lexical and structural elements) rather than grammatical issues. The research hypotheses appear to be correct, at least for these languages.
Keywords: The Little Prince , Antoine de Saint Exupéry, literary translation, modern Hebrew, modern standard Arabic, vocabulary
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background features of translation studies of literary works
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Translation examples
  • 5.Analysis
  • 6.Findings: Answers to the research questions
    • 6.1What do Word Count Studies of the Source Text and Its Translation(s) Contribute to Translation Science?
    • 6.2How Does Comparing Different Translations of the Same Text into the Same Language Contribute to Translation Research?
    • 6.3Does the Translation of One Text into Two (or More) Genealogically Related Languages Reveal Similar Features in Both Translations?
  • 7.Summary and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00318.ros
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