The description of the setting in two translations of Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley
The present study investigates the semantic, syntactic and figurative challenges that pose difficulty to the two
translators of
Midaq Alley into English, particularly in the extracts that describe the setting of the novel. The
two translations examined are Trevor Le Gassick’s (a revised edition published in
1992)
and
Humphrey Davies’ (2011). Several problematic extracts are selected to discuss the
difficulties involved. The difficulties are tackled on three levels: semantic, figurative and syntactical. The semantic level
includes subtleties and shades of meaning among different lexical choices made by the two translators. This level also includes
culture-specific items; religious and Qur’anic expressions; and juxtaposition of Classical Arabic and MSA or Cairene lexical
items. The figurative level includes the tropes that the ST makes use of as an emblem of literary texts. This includes, but is not
limited to, metaphors, hyperboles, etc. The syntactical level is concerned with the syntactic structures and the sentential shifts
that occur due to the diversity of the translation strategies adopted at the sentential level. Strategies of translation adopted
are also analyzed in tandem with all the above levels. The study concludes that Le Gassick has taken liberties with the ST, very
often omitting, compressing and chunking, while Davies has stuck to the letter of the original, thus copying the ST structure as
much as possible.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Summary of Midaq Alley
- 3.Studies on the translation of Midaq Alley into English
- 4.Methods and materials
- 5.Analysis
- 5.1The semantic level
- 5.1.1Subtleties and shades of meaning
- 5.1.2Culture-specific items
- 5.1.3Religious and Qur’anic expressions
- 5.1.4Juxtaposing old and new Arabic expressions
- 5.2The syntactical level
- 5.2.1Adverbials
- 5.2.2Tense
- 5.2.3Complex and lengthy sentential structures
- 5.2.4Miscellaneous syntactical challenges
- 5.3The figurative level
- 5.3.1Metaphors
- 5.3.2Personifications
- 5.4A note on syntactico-semantic overlap
- 6.Conclusions
- Notes
-
References