AWEJ. Special Issue on Translation No.3 May, 2014 Pp. 105 – 115
Translating Repetition in Political Speeches
Omaya Mohammed Waleed Al- Fahmawi
Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia
Abstract
This paper mainly engages with the area of rendering Arabic political speeches into English. The study basically tries to classify and figure out the most common linguistic and cultural problems that translators could face during the translation process. Moreover, a number of strategies will be presented to handle such obstacles. Needless to say, these strategies will be presented according to the way translator has rendered the words or sentences that are considered to be problematic. It is worth mentioning that this study concentrates on linguistic issues with special emphasis on repetition as this device is highly motivated within the nature of Arabic. Furthermore, a number of cultural problems will be addressed within the study specifically religious ones. The case study of this paper is a number of speeches that were given by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, about various subjects. These speeches and their translations can be found on the official website of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. After data analysis, the results will be drawn illustrating a number of examples extracted from the case study. A connection will also be established between the various strategies that have been used by the translator and the different types of translation norms specially initials norms classified by Gideon Toury (1995).
Keywords: translation studies, translation norms, translation strategies, repetition, political speeches, political discourse.