This study is about the translatability of Arabic religious legal terms in Palestinian divorce documents. It is a qualitative descriptive study which aims at exploring the translator’s choices and decisions in dealing with divorce terminologies to determine the determinant norms that can affect or enhance divorce terminologies in Arabic-English translation. In doing so, Vinay and Darbelnet’s translation procedures are followed to assess the translations. The study has looked into the translations of divorce terminologies in Palestinian divorce documents. Translated texts of Palestinian divorce documents have been selected from Palestinian sworn translators and certified translation offices to be representative of this text type. A set of specified divorce terms have been analysed. As a result, it is discovered that the translators rely highly on the direct strategy to translate general terms such as ‘nafaqa, dukhul, ibra’ while the oblique technique is used to translate culture-specific terms such as: khalwa, raji, baen baynona sughra and kubra’. The research reveals also that the translations decisions depend not only on translation norms, but also on language norms related to culture- specific terms.
This study deals with the translation of speech acts in legal documents from Arabic into English. It aims at describing the translatability of speech acts to determine whether there are meaning loss or meaning gain and the reasons behind that. In doing so, the study follows Searle’s speech acts concept and taxonomy since Searle’s taxonomy is based on the illocutionary force of the speech act. Being a qualitative study, samples of translated divorce contracts have been collected from Palestinian sworn translators and translation certified offices. Speech acts have been identified, categorized, and analyzed based on Searle taxonomy. Then, the translation of the speech acts is analyzed in terms of the meaning of the illocutionary force of the different speech acts. The study has revealed that the illocutionary force is conveyed completely in some cases. In other cases, it is affected by the translators’ choices in using active voices instead of passive voices, present perfect and simple past instead of simple present, mistranslation of some verbs expressing directive force, probability modals instead of prohibition modals, style shift from direct speech into indirect speech, and omission of introducing verbs of speech act force. It is concluded that both sematic and pragmatic norms should be taken into consideration in translating speech acts of legal documents, which optimize Arabic - English legal translation.
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