Translation of Taboos: A Case Study on Translating the F-Word Into Arabic (original) (raw)
2021, Journal of Research in Language & Translation
In this descriptive case study, I aim to explore the translations and translation strategies of taboo words into Arabic and the strategies used in the translation process. Particularly, my focus is on the translation of the F-word and the possible translations of this word into Arabic to present an acceptable product or translation to the target culture. For this purpose, I adapt Chesterman's (2000) comparative model and applied Baker's (1992) strategies of translation for classifying the collected data. The corpus of this study are two versions of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: the source text (ST) is in English and the target text (TT) is translated into Arabic. I examine the source text to list all the F-words mentioned and detected the word 179 times. Then I compare the listed words or phrases to the target text, to examine the translation and strategies used by the translator of the target text. This is the first study, to my knowledge, focusing on the translation of the F-word into Arabic and exploring the possibility of translating taboo words into acceptable equivalents in the TT.
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