Difficulties Encountered by Arab Translators in Translating Love

Difficulties Encountered by Arab Translators in
Translating Love Songs from Arabic into English
Mahmoud A. AL-KHATIB
University of Science & Technology, Jordan
Abstract/ Résumé
Cet article étude des problèmes et des difficultés que les traducteurs arabes rencontrent en
traduisant des chansons arabes en anglais. Il s’agit que chaque culture a des caractéristiques
distinctes qui le rendent différent de chaque autre culture. La communication interculturelle
présente ainsi beaucoup de défis et l’un d’entre eux est la nécessité de prendre conscience de
l’importance de comprendre les aspects culturels - littéraires de l’espace croix - culturelle.
Les textes choisis pour la traduction sont cinq chansons d’amour les plus populaires et
reconnues dans le monde arabe. Quatre stratégies principes de ceux employées par des
auteurs de chanson arabe ont été identifiées: flatterie, blâmer, douleur, et se plaindre. Un
projet de traduction a été formé pour découvrir comment ces chansons étaient traduites en
anglais. Les sujets étaient (10) traducteurs qui ont de maîtrise en Anglais, Traduction, ou
Linguistique Appliquée. Les difficultés que les traducteurs arabes rencontrent en traduisant
des chansons arabes de l’amour en anglais ont été identifiées et discutées au-dessous de trois
titres principaux: collocation lexique, espace lexique, et transfert culturel. Des extraits des
données contenant les erreurs faites par celui traducteurs sont présentés et les implications
socio -pragmatiques pour la signification et la communication interculturelle sont discutées.
Keywords/ Mots-Clés
Translation, love songs, lyrical poetry, Arabic-English contrastive linguistics, intercultural
communication
I. Introduction
Hodge (1985:122-123) defines a song as an oral form, which is “normally
distinguished from everyday speech, however, by a degree and type of vocal resonance,
whether open (“melodious”) or constrained (“harsh”). Along with resonance, there is
typically a significant type of pitch pattern. This may differ from speech by having
more variation (“tune”) or less variation, as in monotone chants”. He adds “Song
frequently has a marked form of stress patterning (“rhythm”) which may be reinforced
by actions (e.g. moving the head, clapping, tapping feet) or instruments (e.g. drum beats,
etc.)”. We like to sing because singing is the best way to express our feelings towards
those we are attracted to (see Al-Khatib, 2003). Love is defined by the Collins English
Dictionary (1995: 992) as a strong feeling of affection towards someone who you are
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romantically or sexually attracted to. Wikipedia Encyclopedia (2006) defines “love
songs” as songs about love, a subset of songs that deal with intimacy. They are usually
romantic ballads, but may also deal with the darker side, such as infidelity and breakups.
Love songs have been around for hundreds of years and are found in most cultures.
Thus, a love song is seen as a reflective element providing the basis for at least two
types of information: (1) information about love as a socio-psychological phenomenon;
(2) information about the sociocultural norms of the society in which it is composed and
sung.
Since singing can be seen as one way of communicating, a good translation of a song
(as a means of communication) requires sufficient knowledge of culturally-bound rules,
including those relating to the selection of the appropriate strategy (Clyne, 1981: 61).
Ethnographic research in folklore and other verbal arts, for example, has shown that it is
not only different cultures that vary in their discourse modes, but also those cultures
which have had frequent contacts with each other and whose languages and cultures are
similar to one another to a considerable extent. Earlier research into differences between
Western cultures such as the English, French, German and American cultures (cf. Stross,
1975; Hodge, 1985; Georgakopoulou, 1994; Hill and Irvine, 1993; Stahl, 1989; Bauman,
1984; Heath, 1983) pinned down some of the characteristic differences in the verbal
behavior of Western people as expressed in folk tales, proverbs, riddles, and songs. This
fact was clearly manifested in the words of Leith and Myerson (1989: 43) who argued
that “songs actually seem to assert values of shared rather than personal feeling, the
communal and collective experience rather than the individual or unique”.
II. Theoretical background and literature review
The two areas which most nearly approach total untranslatability, according to
Wikipedia Encyclopedia (2006), are poetry and puns; poetry is difficult to translate
because of its reliance on the sounds (for example, rhymes) and rhythms of the source
language; puns, and other similar semantic wordplay, because of how tightly they are
tied to the original language.” The difficulty that translators often encounter in the
process of translating poetry in general and lyrics in particular from one language into
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