Analyzing Translation Strategies of Culture-Specific Items From English Into Arabic in Their Eyes Were Watching God

Abstract

Despite growing interest in translating African-American literature, little research has examined how Culture-Specific Items (CSIs) are handled, especially the balance between preserving cultural authenticity and ensuring translation readability. This study analyzes the procedures and strategies used to render CSIs in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God into Arabic. By employing Newmark’s (1988) taxonomy of translation procedures and Venuti’s (1995) domestication and foreignization strategies, 713 CSIs were systematically identified, extracted, and analyzed from the source and target texts using a mixed-methods approach. The analysis reveals that literal translation was the predominant procedure, used to translate 43.5% of the items, followed by functional equivalence (11.8%) and synonymy (9%). Based on the CSI analysis, 60.6% of the items were foreignized. Furthermore, back-translation assessment indicates that while 54.8% of the CSIs maintained semantic accuracy, 45.2% experienced semantic shift. Of these, 19.8% showed a slight change in meaning, 3.4% showed a significant change in meaning, 8.3% exhibited a breach of the target language system, 13% resulted in distortion of meaning, and 0.7% were not translated. These findings suggest that although literal translation preserves source culture elements, it often compromises the semantic accuracy, especially when handling items used idiomatically and metaphorically to express African-American folklore and traditions.