Applying Nord’s Functionalist Model to the English Translation of the Fatwa on the Rules of Hijab for the Muslim Minority in the US

Abstract

the context of functionalist approaches to translation, this thesis focuses on the functionalist theories, and the effectiveness of the functionalist translation approach in the practice of translating Islamic verdicts in Arabic fatwa, without prejudice to any of the Islamic laws. Four freelance translators were given a text of one fatwa about the rules of hijab to translate from Arabic into English without a translation brief. Then, virtual interviews were conducted to identify the difficulties they faced based on the translation approaches of their choice. The target recipients, the Muslim minority of the US, were also surveyed to check their background knowledge of these rules and the meanings of some religious terms in this fatwa. Christine Nord’s (1991/2006) well-known theoretical framework for analyzing the intra- and extralinguistic factors affecting translation was used to understand the source text (ST) as well as the target text (TT) readers of this fatwa. This framework served this research as a meta-analysis of the functional translation approach on an Islamic text and was used to present a detailed discussion of the way extratextual, and intra-textual factors interrelate for the production of a TT. The analysis of such factors proves that identifying elements of the ST is relevant for the production of the TT, as well as for the establishment of procedures to be adopted in the process of producing a new text for a specific audience and specific purposes in the target communicative situation.