Kamil Kilani’s Adaptation of Shakespeare in Arabic Children’s Literature: Acculturation Versus Enculturation

Abstract

Children’s literature is a young literary genre which is guided by a complex set of motivational, cognitive and metacognitive considerations. In the Arab world, children’s literature emerged in tandem with the modern translation movement but has started to prosper as an independent literary form only recently. Translating for children is an arduous task with myriad challenges on the linguistic, sociocultural and educational levels. This paper aims to research Kamil Kilani’s Arabic adaptation of King Lear as a model to translate for children. Kilani’s translations are significant because they are adapted in a way which responds to the needs of children without simplifying the lexical and stylistic components of the source texts or compromising their cultural content. The paper adopts a descriptive methodology supporting the main argument with comparative examples from the source text and the target text. The analysis shows that Kilani’s adaptation revolutionized the source text’s form and structure, while preserving its conceptual content, language level and style exquisitely. The results suggest that translating for children does not have to embrace cultural adaptation strategies and can instead embrace a model of acculturation between the source text cultural content and the target text readers.

Enhancing Translation Students’ Intercultural Competence: Affordances of Online Transnational Collaboration

“…These were collected by OHLI instructor who classified the students into three categories and counted the number of students in each category (as explained earlier) for further analysis. The reflections below reveal that most students adapted the STs" cultural content to address challenges dealing with the presence of cultural-specific content, which is the main concern for translators of children"s literature, and this observation is in line with the literature"s account on children"s literature (Leonardi, 2020;Omar, 2021b).…”

“…Children"s literature differs from other types of literature in view of its sensitive and ancillary position that encourages translators to deal with it flexibly. The most common trend in translating literary works as children"s literature is to domesticate them for cognitive reasons, i.e., to educate the readers and facilitate their understanding, and metacognitive reasons that include entertaining the readers and responding to the extralinguistic needs related to their age and sociocultural environment (Leonardi, 2020;Omar, 2021b).…”

“…The authors" analysis of students" progress was not supported with empirical examples that illustrate the affordances and hindrances of digital telecollaboration in translation pedagogy. In view of the empirical nature of the scholarly topic, substantiating the results and analysis with practical examples from students" tasks and reflections is highly significant since learners" reflections enhance the authenticity of collected data and results can be used as evidence that allows instructors to gauge the development in their learners" competencies (Salih & Omar, 2022a;2022b;2022c;2023).…”

“…13, No. 8;2023 Published by Sciedu Press 634 ISSN 1925-0703 E-ISSN 1925 cultures and values". Another student observed, "I want the children to learn more about other religions and understand the differences between Christianity and Islam.…”

Translating Macbeth’s Colour Metaphors Into Arabic: A Revised CMT Approach to Shakespeare’s Creative Metaphors

“…Shakespeare's translation into Arabic is an extended project launched by an initiative of Arab academics and intellectuals who showed interest in evaluating the different endeavours of translating Shakespeare's work into the Arabic language from various perspectives. Some academic research projects on the topic chose to research the Arabic translations of Shakespeare from the angle of the contributions made by notable Arab translators to Shakespeare's translation vis-à -vis the TTs' accuracy in presenting the STs' content on the lexical, conceptual as well as stylistic levels (Alsaai, 1997;Omar, 2012Omar, , 2020Omar, , 2021Twaij, 1973;Zaki, 1978). Most academic research, however, especially recent projects, on Shakespeare's Arabic translations focused on the topic from a socio-cultural perspective (Al-Shetawi, 1989, 2013; Hanna, 2006Hanna, , 2007Hanna, , 2009Hanna, , 2016.…”