Analysis of the use of domestication and foreignization to convey cultural elements in two novels of Ibrahim Al-Koni

الملخص

This study investigates how usually domestication and foreignization strategies are employed in literary works to convey cultural elements like ecology, material culture, religious ideas ….etc. It discusses the scholarly controversy about translation theories, especially with regard to how well each approach conveys cultural components and the motivations behind translators' decisions. These issues are considered by comparing the translations of two Arabic novels written by the Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni (Anubis and The Bleeding of the Stone). Certain texts are extracted in order to apply the two strategies. The primary conclusions of the study show that although both domestication and foreignization techniques are used, translators tended to use domestication more often than foreignization. Most cultural elements were domesticated by replacing SL terminology with their TL equivalents.

Key words: Domestication – foreignization – Cultural elements -Alkoni’s novels- Literary translation