Example

q Now let’s look at the translation of the following couple of lines taken from Shakespeare’s poem: ‘To His Love’ and see whether Fatima AlNaib has done a good job or not:

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day;
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”
Fatimah AlNaib translated it as follows (Khulusi, 1959):
من ذا يقارن حسنك المغري بصيف قدتجلى وفنون سحرك قدباتت في ناظري أسمى وأغلى

q By using the holistic approach explained above, we can say that although AlNaib was a poetess and well qualified to approach translating Shakespeare’s poetry, she failed to capture the cultural dimension of the poem.

باستخدام النهج الشمولي وشرح أعلاه، يمكننا أن نقول أنه على الرغم من أن الشاعرة فاطمة كانت مؤهلة لترجمة نهج شعر شكسبير لكنها فشلت في تصوير البعد الثقافي للقصيدة.

The mistake AlNaib made was the misunderstanding of the cultural significance of the key word of the whole poem- ‘summer’s day’. She gave it the literal Arabic equivalent ‘الصيف’. This makes her translation lose the message Shakespeare wants to convey, the poetic and emotional effect on the reader and the climatic significance of the summer.

هذه الاخطاء صنعت عدم فهم اهميتة الثقافه لمفتاح كلمات كل قصيدة ‘summer’s day’ . هي اعطتنا ترجمة ادبية متساوية. اخطاء ترجمتها افقدت رسالة شكسبير التي اراد نقل جهده العاطفي والشعري للقارئ واهمية المناخ الصيفي.

q A comparison between the connotation of the English and Arabic summers will show the seriousness of the problem that the translator may face while working on something relating to climatic features:

English Summer

A Symbol of beauty & liveliness
Very short 1-2 months
Cool and temperate
Positive psychological effect

Arabic Summer
.................................................. .
Very long 3-4 months
Dry/humid and hot
Negative psychological effect


The above rough comparison shows that if English summer is translated in Arabic summer, the translation does not make any sense to the Arabic reader, because his/her attitude towards summer is different from that of the English reader.

وتبين المقارنة التقريبيه أعلاه أنه إذا ترجم الصيف الانجليزي في الصيف العربي , لايمكن ان يدركها القارئ العربي موقفه اتجاه الصيف مختلف عن القارئ الانجليزي.

Therefore, the ‘substitution’ approach could be used to solve a problem as such.

لذلك نهج التبديل ‘substitution’يمكن يستخدم لحل هذه المشكلة

Substitution approach is one of a number of concepts and techniques in the general class of ordered metamorphosis.

نهج التبديل هو واحده من عدد من المفاهيم والاساليب في الفئة العامه للتحويل المنظم .

Substitution can operate in a way that maintains the matter and logic of a theme while altering the expression convention (Steiner, 1975).

التبديل يمكن ان يعمل طريقة تحفظ النمط والمعنى للفكرة عندما نبدل الاسلوب المتوافق.

In other words, Al Naib could have substituted the Arabic Spring for the English summer as the connotations of Arabic Spring are more or less the same as those of the English summer
.

A rough comparison may illustrate this point:

English Summer

A Symbol of beauty & liveliness
Very short 1-2 months
Cool and temperate

Arabic Spring
Positive psychological effect
A Symbol of beauty & liveliness
Very short 1-2 months
Cool and temperate
Positive psychological effect