Rendition of Scientific Terminology in Two Arabic Translations of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1872) by Isma‘il Mazhar (1928) and Magdy el-Meligy (2004)

Abstract

It seems that science is hardly retranslated into Arabic and scientific retranslations are inadequately investigated in the Arab World. This study, therefore, attempts to answer the following question: How is retranslating scientific discourse terminologically (ir)relevant? To answer this broad question, the study tries to show how scientific terminology in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1872) was twice translated into Arabic in 1928 by twentieth-century liberal thinker Isma‘il Mazhar and later in 2004 by contemporary physician Magdy M. el-Meligy. First, Chapter I reviews a tarjamah-ta‘rīb debate over translating novel terminology along with the reasons of non-standardization in Arabic. Then, Chapter II introduces the framework, with a particular focus on the components of terminology work and the primary and secondary methods used to create and translate terminology into Arabic. After that, in Chapter III, Darwin’s scientific terms are analyzed against the four components of terminology. Finally, Chapter IV investigates how Mazhar and Meligy translated/retranslated Darwin’s terminology. Although each translator has used a selection of methods to render Darwin’s terminology into Arabic, this diachronic, descriptive-analytic study found that Meligy’s retranslation has corrected some terms, updated some borrowings and archaisms, created some neologisms and filled in some gaps. It has also handled some spelling, dysphemistic and transcription problems, while addressing some dialectal and knowledge-motivated issues in footnotes. In addition, because Meligy’s version of The Origin also includes some terminological shortcomings – such as ignoring linguistic economy, keeping Mazhar’s mistakes, using archaic, genre-inconsistent and non-standard terms and overusing synonymization – this proves that this retranslation even calls for a further update. All this shows how retranslating scientific discourse is really relevant and is not simply a “redundant repetition” as some claim.