The Sealed Nectar’
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Translating Religious Terms and Culture in ‘The Sealed Nectar’: A model for quality assessment By Raja Saad AlGhamdi Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Languages, Cultures and Societies University of Leeds 2016 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. ©2016 The University of Leeds and Raja AlGhamdi i To the soul of my father, Sa’ad Al-Ghamdi, my inspiration at all times. ii Acknowledgements I thank God (Allah), the Creator and the Sustainer of the whole universe, for bestowing on me the completion of this thesis and for surrounding me with such nice and devoted people in my academic and personal life. I owe a debt of gratitude to the one who is the light of my eyes, my mother. Many thanks to you: as many as the sleepless nights you spent with me, as the many prayers you said to me and as the many times you took care of my children while I have been studying. I also owe a particular debt of gratitude to the most generous, sweet-hearted and loving person I have ever met, my long-suffering husband. Words cannot express how grateful I am to him and to my children, bits of my own heart, for their patience and understanding. I am likewise indebted to Prof. Juliane House and Prof. Mona Baker for their insightful advice; to my friends (Dr. Haifa, Dr. Malak, Dr. Falih, Dr. John, Stacey, Maram and Raghad) for their help and moral support; and to the administrative and staff members of the University of Leeds for their warm welcome throughout my period of study. A special thank you goes to my home country, Saudi Arabia, the Royal Commission and Jubail University College that have funded this study. I warmly thank Darussalam publishing house in Riyadh, in the person of the publisher (Abdul-Malik Mujahid), for giving their time to answer my questions. I am deeply thankful also to Noor Ash-Sham in Damascus; to its owner (Maher Abul Zahab); and to the translator (Essam Diab) for their cooperation despite all difficulties they are facing with the Civil War in Syria. Finally, yet most importantly, my great gratitude is to my supervisor, Prof. Jeremy Munday, for his invaluable comments and sympathetic guidance; and to the co- supervisor, Dr. El Mustapha Lahlali, I am also greatly indebted. iii Abstract 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 House’s model to make it applicable to culture-bound texts that call for overt translation. It introduces a consilience of: 1) Nord’s notion of culturemes; 2) Nida’s categorization of cultural features to help in analyzing religious terms and culture; 3) Dickins et al.’s compensation strategies that show the translator’s endeavor to balance the translation loss while dealing with such sensitive terms; 4) Martin and White’s appraisal theory which explores attitudinal meaning and, hence, helps in investigating the translator’s evaluation of these terms; and 5) Katan’s model that helps in highlighting the correlation between levels of cultures and discourse variables (field, mode and tenor). Application of the enhanced model reveals mismatches on all the discourse variables which indicate the application of a cultural filter that adopts the norms of English academic discourse, in addition to overt errors that distort the message of this sensitive text. The study thus complements House’s framework of translation quality assessment and introduces a model that can be further applied to assess overt translations. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................... iii Abstract ..................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ....................................................................................... v List of Tables ............................................................................................. x List of Figures ........................................................................................... xi Key of Abbreviations ............................................................................... xii Key of Symbols........................................................................................ xii Transliteration Chart ............................................................................... xiii Chapter One: Introduction ...................................................................... 1 1.0 Overview ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Motivation ........................................................................................................... 7 1.2 Objectives ........................................................................................................... 9 1.3 Research Questions ........................................................................................... 10 1.4 Significance of the study ................................................................................... 10 1.5 Methodology ..................................................................................................... 11 1.6 The contexts of culture for Arraḥīq Almaḳtūm and The Sealed Nectar............... 12 1.7 Structure of the Thesis ....................................................................................... 18 Chapter Two: Key Issues in Translation Studies ................................. 21 2.0 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 21 2.1 Translation as an interdisciplinary field of study ................................................ 21 v 2.2 Cultural approaches to translation ...................................................................... 24 2.2.1 Anthropological studies ................................................................................. 25 2.2.2 Cultural studies .............................................................................................. 26 2.2.3 Translation studies ......................................................................................... 29 2.3 Shifts in translation ........................................................................................... 33 2.4 Translatability vs. untranslatability .................................................................... 36 2.5 Translators’ ideology and axiology .................................................................... 39 2.6 Summary of the key issues in translation studies ............................................... 50 Chapter Three: Discourse, Genre and Translation .............................. 52 3.0 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 52 3.1 Translating Religious Texts ............................................................................... 52 3.1.1 Torah translation ............................................................................................ 53 3.1.2 Bible translation ............................................................................................. 58 3.1.3 Buddhist scripture translation ......................................................................... 64 3.1.4 Qur’an translation .......................................................................................... 68 3.2 Translating Islamic Religious Discourse ............................................................ 80 3.3 Biography translation ........................................................................................ 89 3.4 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 102 Chapter Four: Translation Quality Assessment Models .................... 104 4.0 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 104 4.1 Quality assessment models .............................................................................. 104 4.1.1 Reiss and Vermeer’s model .......................................................................... 107 vi 4.1.2 Nord’s model ............................................................................................... 108 4.1.3 Williams’ model .......................................................................................... 109 4.1.4 Delizée’s model ........................................................................................... 111 4.2 House’s TQA model ........................................................................................ 113 4.2.1 Basic principles of House’s model ............................................................... 114 4.2.2 Composing the