English Translation of Arabic Flash Story: A Discourse Analysis Oriented Approach

Abstract

The present study examines the translation of Arabic flash stories in several of Ahmad Jarallah’s Flash stories taken from his collection entitled: The Adventures of Sindibab (2019) by focusing on the macro-structural aspects of the flash story. The paper aims to check up the problems of narrative analysis: macrostructure in translating the flash story from Arabic into English, also finding out the translator’s success in achieving an appropriate equivalence of the source text or not.

The study hypothesizes that there are some difficulties in analyzing such texts, despite the presence of some resemblance between Arabic and English macro-structure items in the flash story, due to the different understanding of the macrostructure elements and the real meaning of the flash story by each translator. To evaluate the appropriateness of macro-structure discourse renditions, an eclectic model developed by the researcher will be used in discussing the selected texts depending on Nida’s (1964) model as well as some opinions related to several Arabic scholars in this respect.

The study has concluded that there are some differences in translations depending on the different comprehension of the translators with regards to the spirit and meaning of the texts and the macrostructure of each language.