Literal-Functional Analysis of Political Speeches and the Case of Political Lexical Creation

Abstract

The field of Translation Studies (TS) has witnessed a shift from the focus on the transference of words, to the focus on the structure of the language and the culture of its users. The shift began with the works of Jakobson, Nida, Newmark, Vinay and Darbelnet, among others. However, and not very long after the mentioned shift, a new shift has been witnessed with the works of Reiss, Holz-Mänttäri, Vermeer, House, and Baker, among others, who focused on the context and function of the Source Text (ST). Nonetheless, the field has witnessed a third turn that shifted the whole field into a new level to fit the complexity of life, and of both language and translation. This turn was prominent in the 1990s and was called the ‘Cultural Turn in TS.’ The cultural Turn has turned the focus on the Target Text (TT) and Target Reader (TR) instead of on the ST and Source Reader (SR). The Cultural Turn focuses on, inter alia, the purpose of the text, publishing agency of the TT, translation norms and laws, rewriting, context, target message, gender, power relations, and ideology. The turn was initiated first by Toury, Hermans, Lambert, Baker, Simon, Bassnett, Venuti, Berman, Lewis, Pound, and Lefevere with their Descriptive and Post-Colonial Studies in the field in the early 1970s –1990s. Politics and political texts has gained and are still gaining broad attention from both scholars and researchers. This can be attributed to the fact that translation is the basic and strongest mean used by politicians. Political texts and their functions are many, but this paper sheds the light on one type of texts, namely: Political Speeches. The paper tries to answer questions related to the translation of political speeches by analysing King Muhammad VI speech on the 46th anniversary of ‘Green March’ in 2021.