The Translatability of Culture-Specific Items in the Novel Season of Martyrdom

Culture-specific items (CSIs) in literary translation are obstacles translators may face during the translation process because of the absence of a systematic equivalence between the source language (SL) and the target language (TL). The problems with their translation may increase if languages and cultures are diverse, such as Arabic and English. The aim of this study is to investigate the translation of the culture-specific items (CSIs) in Arabic literary text to English and to describe the occurrence of the translation procedures used by the translator to transfer source text (ST) cultural aspects. This study is therefore a descriptive qualitative study, which investigates the translation procedures used by Paula Hayder (2018) to translate the CSIs of Jamal Naji’s novel Season of Martyrdom (2015) into English. The occurrences of the CSI in the ST and their translation procedures in the target text (TT) are categorized in accordance with Newmark’s (2001) culture-specific item categorization and the translation procedures proposed by Vinay and Darbalnet (2000). The results reveal that the translator utilized seven translation procedures: functional equivalence, description, free translation, modulation, borrowing, cultural equivalence, and endnote. Functional and cultural equivalences were the most frequently used translation procedures. Moreover, free translation and endnote translation procedures were used sparingly. The CSIs translation procedures used by the translator showed that the communicative purpose of translation was achieved in various degrees when rendering the culture of the ST.