Problemática de la traducción de los elementos culturales del árabe al español “Naguib Mahfuz como ejemplo”

Abstract

Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) is considered the spiritual father of the Arabic novel because his literary works have a distinctive artistic feature that has made him a prominent figure in Arabic literature. After Naguib Mahfouz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, his works was translated into Spanish and through specialized publishing houses. His thirty-three translated works were translated into novels and short stories. The works of Naguib Mahfouz is a true mirror of the reality and culture of Egypt in all its details and linguistic, social, material and religious characteristics such as: Proverbs, spoken words, linguistic structures, food, drinks, tools, customs, traditions, historical figures, political parties and religious shrines. Details and components constitute the so-called translation science in the cultural elements of the source language or the language from which it is transmitted. A large number of theorists agreed on the science of translation (Valkhov and Floren: 1970, House: 1973, Nida: 1975, Nord: 1997, Newmark 2004). The translator is an intermediary not only between two languages but also between two cultures. Translation is only a reflection of the culture, literature, arts and social manifestations of peoples, etc. Differences between cultures can cause the translator more complications than differences in language structure. Because of the majority of those who translated the works of Naguib Mahfouz are Spanish people, whether they are Arabists or students of Arabic literature in Spanish universities, we will find how the cultural difference between the translator and the language from which it is transmitted or the source language can affect and significantly affect the occurrence of dynamic equivalence in Translation process. Therefore, the transfer of cultural elements in all its details, which is rich in Naguib Mahfouz literature from Arabic to Spanish, has some problems, for example: 1- The differences between the date of publication of the original work and the date of its translation, which may be obstacles to the transfer of some cultural elements that may have been disappeared or adapted. 2- Some translators may use the footnotes to clarify or index meanings at the end of translation, but although these footnotes may be useful for the information of the recipient, but at the same time may separate the reader from the privacy and vitality of the scene in the process of reading and receiving. 3- There is also the problem of translating some of the novels of Naguib Mahfouz into Spanish through a special intermediate language English or French, leading to the loss of a large part of the spirit of the text translated and there may be some deletions or additions, which emerged clearly after Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize and the need to translate his literary work in the shortest possible time was used as an intermediate language, which is the English language as in the novels of Midaq Alley and Miramar. Also there is more than one interpreter within the single novel, which led to multiple curricula, which cause some sort of confusion in reception of the translated works. It can be said that most of them were commercial translations, even academic ones did not differ significantly from the commercial translations. 4- One of the biggest problems of translation in general is the lack of institutions and publishing houses that greatly support the process of translation of the classics of Arabic literature by specialized Egyptian translators and able to understand their culture in cooperation with the translators of the language transferred to achieve the greatest possible accuracy of communication. There is also the problem of the absence of specialized dictionaries, which are related to modern cultural terms and the colloquial language.