Recent Submissions

  • The construction of Palestinian Muslim masculinities in two novels by Laila Halaby and Randa Jarrar

    Maloul, Linda F.; No Collaboration; Queen Effat Women Studies; 0; 0; English & Translation; 0; Maloul, Linda F. (Taylor & Francis, 2019-03-14)
    Past, and more significantly, post 9/11 Anglo-American political and popular culture representations of Arab Muslim masculinities in general and Palestinian masculinities in particular as evil, violent and terrorizing produced the myth of the Arab Muslim masculine evil: an ahistorical image of Arab and Muslim men that reduces them to a few negative, sometimes contradictory, characteristics. An understanding of politics and cultural productions as inextricably linked can explain the reasons behind the strength and sustainability of these negative stereotypes. In addition, it explains why Arab American writers find fiction an appropriate medium to produce diverse images of Arabs, Muslims and Arab Americans. This article draws primarily on Daniel Monterescu’s models of hegemonic Palestinian masculinities which follow Raewyn Connell’s model of hierarchical masculinities to explore the ways by which Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan (2003) and Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home (2008) offer complex Palestinian Muslim masculinities, particularly in the domestic sphere. These masculinities are positioned within specific historical, socio-political and cultural realities, which are not solely governed by narrow definitions of Islam. Palestinian Muslim masculinities in both novels challenge monolithic and essentialist representations of Arab Muslim men in general and Palestinian men, particularly after the events of 9/11.
  • Political Islam, Islam as faith and modernity in 1970s Egypt: a socio-political reading of Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun

    Maloul, Linda F.; No Collaboration; NA; 0; 0; English & Translation; 0; Maloul, Linda F. (Routledge, 2017-08-22)
    In her In the Eye of the Sun (1992), Ahdaf Soueif constructs Muslim characters and negotiates public manifestations of Islamic piety such as veiling. This article argues for a reading of her constructions within their historical and socio-political contexts in order to illustrate a common perceived difference between political Islam and Islam as private faith and to elucidate what it means to be Muslim and modern in 1970s Egypt. This reading will highlight the different ways by which Soueif’s text has been interpreted and manipulated by some of her readers and critics. In addition, it will question anew Arab women writers’ presumed role as reliable ‘native informants’ or ‘cultural commentators’.
  • English-Arabic Cultural Effect in Translation: A Relevance Theory Perspective

    Khuddro, Ahmad; Department Collaboration; English & Translation; Hussain, Alaa Eddin (European American Journals, 2016-01)
    This study is framed within a competence-oriented model which provides the target text (TT) receiver with communicative clues. These clues allow inference to be optimally captured. Hence, this approach looks at translation as an example of communication mainly based on the cost and effect model of inferencing and interpretations. Strategies adopted in this paper are determined by context-specific consideration of relevance, with special reference to cultural aspects. Applied to translation, one of the most appropriate strategies is to re-produce the cognitive effect intended by the source text (ST) communicator with the lowest possible effort on the part of the TT receiver. This study concludes that when there is a lack of isomorphism or symmetry between the cultural contents of the two languages, the translator will have to opt for content-cognitive effect or cultural transplantation. The translator would have to assess the relevance of content and form in a specific context in order to achieve the same effect in the TT. It has been emphasized, however, that translation as a special instance of human communication leads to the conclusion that various methods may be justified in their own right, if we take into consideration the differences in the text-types, the intention of the author, readership, and the purpose of translation. In a nutshell, however, translation remains a craft which requires not just training and skill but also continually renewed linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge, considerable imagination as well as intelligence and common sense, and most of all talent.
  • Audiovisual English-Arabic Translation: De Beaugrande's Perspective

    Khuddro, Ahmad; Department Collaboration; English & Translation; Hussain, Alaa Eddin (Australian International Academic Centre PTY.Ltd. Sydney, 2016-05)
    This paper attempts to demonstrate the significance of the seven standards of textuality with special application to audiovisual English Arabic translation. Ample and thoroughly analysed examples have been provided to help in audiovisual English-Arabic translation decision-making. A text is meaningful if and only if it carries meaning and knowledge to its audience, and is optimally activatable, recoverable and accessible. The same is equally applicable to audiovisual translation (AVT). The latter should also carry knowledge which can be easily accessed by the TL audience, and be processed with least energy and time, i.e. achieving the utmost level of efficiency. Communication occurs only when that text is coherent, with continuity of senses and concepts that are appropriately linked. Coherence of a text will be achieved when all aspects of cohesive devices are well accounted for pragmatically. This combined with a good amount of psycholinguistic element will provide a text with optimal communicative value. Non-text is certainly devoid of such components and ultimately non-communicative. Communicative knowledge can be classified into three categories: determinate knowledge, typical knowledge and accidental knowledge. To create dramatic suspense and the element of surprise, the text in AV environment, as in any dialogue, often carries accidental knowledge. This unusual knowledge aims to make AV material interesting in the eyes of its audience. That cognitive environment is enhanced by an adequate employment of material (picture and sound), and helps to recover sense in the text. Hence, the premise of this paper is the application of certain aspects of these standards to AV texts taken from various recent feature films and documentaries, in order to facilitate the translating process and produce a final appropriate product.
  • Subtitling in Arabic

    Khuddro, Ahmad; College Collaboration (2000)
    This paper deals with the Arabic translation of different tv scripts, including links, voice overs, soundbites, etc. The nature of these tests dictates the style in the target language.
  • Practical Approaches to English/Arabic Audiovisual Translation

    Khuddro, Ahmad; College Collaboration; English & Translation; Hussain, Alaa Eddin (2016-02)
    This article aims to establish the factors that the translator needs to be aware of in audiovisual translation (AVT) and to show when, how and in what context to mediate in this domain. The article is divided into two parts: The first part discusses what AVT is and shows the fundamental difference between two of its main components: voice-overs and subtitles along with similar aspects particularly in voice-over target text to those in simultaneous interpreting. This difference is either overlooked or misunderstood by theorists in the audiovisual field. The second part of the article shows what the translator might do when presented with audiovisual source text (ST) material that has some factual or logical errors which would inevitably reflect badly on the producer/translator of the target text (TT), and who might be blamed for such obvious errors by the target audience, even though it is not a fault of his/hers but rather a flaw of the ST. Finally, it must be noted here that this article is written from the point of view of an academic as well as a practitioner in the field for almost two decades.
  • Philip Lark’s Poem (translated into Arabic) with comments

    Khuddro, Ahmad; College Collaboration; English & Translation (Cairo, 1992)
    A translation of the poem with commentary on the poem in Arabic.
  • Girls of Riyadh Revisited: Investigating the Quality of the English Collaborative Translation of Rajaa Alsanea’s Arabian Novel

    Khuddro, Ahmad; College Collaboration; English & Translation (AWEJ, 2023-02-24)
    The paper aims to assess the quality of the English collaborative translation of Rajaa Alsanea’s Arabian novel Girls of Riyadh, focusing on linguistic and cultural features of the Target Text, a few of which are sometimes nonexistent in the Source Text. The mixed literal/functional approach to collaborative translation seems to be inconsistent, the paper observes, and it is possibly due to both the apparent tension between the self-translator and her co-translator Marilyn Booth and the prominence of the target culture sometimes recurrent in the Source Text. The paper addresses two questions: To what extent has collaborative translation affected the quality of rendering linguistic, social, and cultural references of the Source Text, such as idiomatic expressions, lexical terms, songs, names of celebrities, religious, and literary references, and traditional festivities? How effective have the literal and functional approach been in this collaborative translation? The findings of this study show that the translation procedures employed, such as omission, addition, and alteration, are sometimes unacceptable. Significantly, the study raises awareness about how the potential tension between the self-translator and the co-translator in the inclusion and exclusion of certain parts of texts can affect the quality of the end product. This paper recommends a fresh ‘critical translation’ of the ST that fills specific points which has been overlooked in the current ‘simple translation’: i.e., by paying attention to the message and intention of the author and suggesting to the use of different procedures by the two translators. The paper recommends that instead of implementing erratically two opposite approaches, the functional and literal approaches, as has been done, collaborative translators should follow one of them only. The current study suggests potential solutions to improve the quality of the English translation of this novel.
  • Media Translation - TV in particular - English-Arabic

    Khuddro, Ahmad; College Collaboration; English & Translation (King Fahed Academy, Tangiers - Alsaadi University., 1997)
    تتناول المقالة الترجمة التلفزيونية من الإنكليزية إلى العربية.
  • Practical Approaches to English/Arabic Audiovisual Translation

    Khuddro, Ahmad; Hussain, Alaa Eddin; English & Translation (2016)
    This article aims to establish the factors that the translator needs to be aware of in audiovisual translation (AVT) and to show when, how and in what context to mediate in this domain. The article is divided into two parts: The first part discusses what AVT is and shows the fundamental difference between two of its main components: voice-overs and subtitles along with similar aspects particularly in voice-over target text to those in simultaneous interpreting. This difference is either overlooked or misunderstood by theorists in the audiovisual field. The second part of the article shows what the translator might do when presented with audiovisual source text (ST) material that has some factual or logical errors which would inevitably reflect badly on the producer/translator of the target text (TT), and who might be blamed for such obvious errors by the target audience, even though it is not a fault of his/hers but rather a flaw of the ST. Finally, it must be noted here that this article is written from the point of view of an academic as well as a practitioner in the field for almost two decades.