Translation Strategies Analysis of Cultural and Metaphorical Expressions in Malcolm X’s Autobiography

Abstract

This study investigates the translation of Malcolm X’s autobiography with specific reference to figurative language (metaphors) and cultural bound expressions. Moreover, the study detects the problems of the translation of cultural terms that may not have their equivalence in Arabic language. By the same token, it seeks to determine to what extent the translator manages, through particular techniques and strategies, to retain and maintain the literary style and aesthetic dimension of the language used in the source text. It highlights the strategies used in translating Malcolm X’s autobiography and investigates factors that play an important role in translating such texts. In exploring these points, the researcher focuses on the types of equivalence and the translation strategies used while translating this autobiography. The present study adopts a descriptive and analytical approach. Its main focus is culturally-bound and figurative expressions. It tackles the concept of translatability of autobiographical texts. The translations of the selected culturally-bound and figurative expressions will be carefully examined. They will be compared with their corresponding ST segments. The analysis will focus on the strategies used by the translator to render them adequately. Moreover, many culturally-bound expressions along with their translations will be analyzed in order to identify the type of equivalents they feature, the translator’s choices that affect the ST, and finally, the factors that influence the translation of these expressions. The findings reveal that such text type is a very important genre which reveals the author’s culture. This reality makes the process of translating such texts problematic for translators. In one hand, the researcher finds that the translator used semantic translation strategy in translating most of the figurative expressions. On the other hand, since there is a lack of equivalence for cultural bound expressions, the translator used pragmatic translation for such expressions.