Investigating Translation Shifts and Modulation in Literary Translation: A Case Study

Abstract

The present research paper examines the techniques of shifts, as proposed by Catford (1965), and modulation, as proposed by Vinay and Darbelnet (1995), adopted by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik in his translation of Palahniuk’s Fight Club. Accordingly, this paper seeks to detect the examples of modulation and the types of shifts employed, the reasons for their adoption and the most frequently used techniques of translation between English, the source language, and Arabic, the target language. The findings illustrate that all types of shifts are employed with a noteworthily frequent use of structure shifts, both optional or obligatory and argues about the structural divergence between English and Arabic. There are not so many modulation examples. It seems that Tawfik tries largely to adhere to the source text with some optional shifts so as not to appear as a translator who practises purely literal translation. This paper’s value lies in its detailed examination of Tawfik’s technique, drawing attention to the differences between English and Arabic language systems.
 
 Received: 11 December 2022 / Accepted: 11 February 2023 / Published: 5 March 2023

Changes in the Syntactic Structure in English-Arabic Simultaneous Interpreting

“…The results of the study indicate that there is no formal equivalence in the process of translation due to the fact that English and Arabic belong to two different language families. The formal modifications made to the target texts, the most common types of shifts, their causes, and their results were explored (Alshahrani, 2023). Structural discrepancies between English and Arabic were found to be the reason for a large ratio of the detected shifts.…”

Exploration of Differences in Style and Manner of English to Urdu Translation of Shafak’s Honour: A Study of Translational Shifts

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