The Strategy of Omission & its Significance in the Translation of Barghouti's “I Saw Ramallah”
Date
2019-07-04
Authors
Abu Ghannam, Fatima Sameeh Hamed
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
جامعة النجاح الوطنية
Abstract
This study examines the controversial strategies applied in translating I Saw Ramallah into English. These strategies are omission and deletion, which were applied widely and repeatedly in translating I Saw Ramallah into English without a particular pattern. The data is gathered from the original Arabic autobiographical book I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti (2011), along with the English version translated by Ahdaf Soueif (2000) and forwarded by Edward W.Said. This is a comparative, contrastive, descriptive, and analytical study; it compares and contrasts the two books, describing omission and deletion strategies and analyzing them. The study analyzes the omitted and deleted content in the translated version and embraces it under four categories: Deletion due to Repetition (morphological and lexical), deleting descriptions and details, omission\deletion of content with traces of colonialism, and omission\deletion of cultural content. It also accounts for the colonial context of I Saw Ramallah and its impact on the translation of the book in terms of the deleted and omitted text. The study concludes that due consideration should be given to the concept of fidelity in translating I Saw Ramallah, and a lot of deletion and omission instances should be reconsidered, taking into account that I Saw Ramallah is a non-fiction autobiographical text narrating the real story of Palestinians. Moreover, the novel is rich with traces of colonialism and resistance, and unfortunately, a considerable part of these instances of colonialism are disregarded via unjustified deletion and omission. Finally, the study maintains that Palestine-peculiar terms, whether they are related to the Palestinian cause or the Palestinian cultural heritage, have to be transliterated and added to the glossary.