Foreignization, Domestication, and the Translation of Gendered Meaning in Raja'a Alem's The Dove's Necklace

This study examines how domestication and foreignization reshape gendered meanings in the English translation of The Dove’s Necklace by Raja’a Alem. Although the novel has received considerable feminist and cultural attention for its representation of women’s bodies, silence, and agency within Saudi society, limited scholarship has explored how translation mediates these gendered meanings across languages. Drawing on Lawrence Venuti’s framework of domestication and foreignization alongside feminist translation theory, the study employs a qualitative comparative analysis of 14 gender-sensitive Arabic–English excerpts. The analysis examines how translational choices reshape representations of female corporeality, desire, silence, honor, and agency at lexical and discursive levels. The findings suggest that domestication intensifies individualized sensual representation. By contrast, foreignization more frequently preserves metaphorical interiority, honor-based silence, and symbolic forms of gender discourse. Importantly, the study demonstrates that translation strategies operate unevenly across different dimensions of gender discourse rather than producing a uniform ideological shift. By integrating translation strategy with feminist literary analysis, the study contributes to translation studies by showing how translation functions as a process of cultural reconfiguration through which gendered meanings are selectively reshaped, preserved, or relocated across linguistic and cultural contexts.