Venuti's Foreignization: Resistance Against The Arabic Culture

What is it about?

This paper gives a brief study on Domestication and Foreignization, and the disputes over these two basic translation strategies. Domestication designates the type of translation in which a transparent and fluent style is adopted to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for the target language readers; while foreignization means a target text is deliberately produced to break target conventions by retaining something of the foreignness of the original.Most of Said's work have been translated into Arabic; some have been translated twice, and some three times. One of these translations forms the core of this paper, which attempts to discuss foreignization strategy. To accomplish this task, Edward Said's Orientalism (1978/2003) is chosen as the source text (ST), and the Arabic translation undertaken by Kamal Abu Deeb (1981/1995) is chosen as the target text (TT).

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Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The translation of Orientalism by Abu Deeb was certainly constructed in a way that would influence the reception of the book and its author in the Arab world for a considerable number of years. Abu Deeb's translation choices labeled Said's writing as inaccessible and complex and demanding an outstanding level of intelligence from the rea