The Literary Translator between the Hammer of Ethnocentrism and the Anvil of Translation Manipulation

Abstract

This article aims to shed light on ethnocentric translation in literary discourse. It seeks to understand the complex relationship between ethnocentrism and literary translation, and to address some difficulties inherent in this type of translation, which often leads to meaning manipulation and, thus, a distortion of accuracy and fidelity in translation. The study also attempts to identify possible misunderstandings arising from such translations and to investigate how translators deal with them when Arabic literary works are translated into other languages, i.e, foreignized or when foreign works are translated into Arabic particularly English ones. The research seeks to answer some fundamental questions as follows: how does ethnocentrism affect the process of literary translation? What are the driving factors behind the emergence of this ethnocentric translation? And what are its implications on both the translated text and the reader? To answer these questions, a descriptive analytical approach is applied, analyzing a set of translated literary texts with a particular focus on the comparison between the source texts and their translations. Various analytical tools were used, such as discourse analysis to analyze the underlying meanings in translated texts, cultural transfer analysis to understand how different cultures are transferred from one language to another, and ethnocentrism analysis to identify aspects of ethnocentrism in translated literary texts. This was done to achieve a clear understanding of translation outcomes and to highlight the extent to which a translator's ethnocentrism affects the translation of literary discourse that may increase the risk to manipulate meaning and widen the gap between different linguistic and cultural systems. The results of the study showed that ethnocentrism significantly affects the literary translation process, leading to meaning distortion as translators manipulate the original meaning to conform to their own values and cultural beliefs. Additionally, ethnocentrism results in cultural omission as translators overlook many cultural aspects of the original text rendering the reader unable to comprehend the text's cultural context. Ultimately, this study confirms that ethnocentrism poses a major challenge to the literary translation process affecting the reader's comprehension and the quality of the translated text.