Toury’s Norms as Applied to the Translation of Arabic Literary Texts Into English

Abstract

This study investigates the applicability of Toury’s norms to the translation of Arabic literary texts into English. It also tackles the translation of sociocultural terms from Arabic literary texts into English and highlights the sociocultural differences between the two languages. Moreover, it uses Toury’s norms to analyze the translated selections of texts by two translators to determine whether each decided to be loyal to the target reader and explain the expression, or if they decided to be loyal to the source text, translate it, and then explain the influence of each decision on the other norms. For this purpose, the researchers selected 40 excerpts from the novel Midaq Alley (1960) by 1988 Nobel Prize winning author (and the “Father of Arabic Literature”), Naguib Mahfouz, along with two translations by Trevor LeGassick (1966) and Humphrey Davies (2011). These 40 texts contained 74 cases or expressions concerning religion, clothing, food, tools, places, and binomials. The study concluded that Toury’s norms (that is, initial norms, preliminary norms, and operational norms) do, indeed, apply to the translation of Arabic literary texts into English. The study shows that the norms are applicable and that the English-translated texts from the Arabic language can be assessed by using these norms.