Crossing Cultures: Unravelling Pragmatic Complexities In Translating Religious Expressions From Algerian Arabic To English

Résumé: Effective communication between societies relies on translation as a crucial tool. Translation facilitates communication among individuals who speak different languages, serving as a conduit for transferring meaning. It is more than a simple transference of information from the source language to the target language; it is a nuanced process that demands the conveyance of all semantic elements present in the source language. The resulting target text must be not only linguistically accurate but also equivalent in meaning to the source text. This study seeks to explore pragmatic failures in translating religious politeness expressions from Algerian Arabic into English. Speech acts have been extracted from various everyday communication contexts, reflecting diverse speech events. The participants consist of 30 randomly selected Master’s students pursuing degrees in translation studies at the University of Oran. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies were employed in the evaluation and analysis of the collected data. The findings reveal that insufficient pragma-religious competence often leads to alterations in the intended meaning of the source message. While a subset of Arabic religious formulations successfully translates into corresponding English expressions, numerous Arabic expressions encounters pragmatic challenges, hindering their ability to convey comparable religious meanings in English. The study underscores the necessity of learning the cultural code that aligns with the use of potential equivalents in the target language to mitigate pragmatic failures. In conclusion, this research sheds light on the complexities of translating religious politeness expressions and emphasizes the significance of cultural awareness to avoid pragmatic failures when working across languages.

Publié dans la revue: Aleph