Ymchil

Diddordebau ymchwil

I am interested in a wide range of topics in the area of Translation Studies including, but not limited to, cultural translation, literary translation, translation teaching, machine translation, and computer-assisted translation. I have written and taught a range of pieces/classes related to these topics in the course of my career to date.

My MA thesis was on the topic of The Translating of the Culture-Specific Items of the novel The Song of Ice and Fire. Using Newmark's proposed translation procedures of translating CSI(Culture-Specific-Items), I examined how the CSIs were tackled in the Arabic translation of the ASOIAF (A Song of Ice and Fire) novel. I also designed a model using both Newmark's CSIs translating procedures (1988) and Venuti's two terms of domestication and foreignization (2008) to determine whether the CSIs in the Arabic translation of the novel had been domesticated or foreignized for the Arabic audience.  

My teaching and research also draw on Adaptation studies and I am specifically interested in the interstice between translation studies and adaption studies. Although both translation and adaptation are two pieces of the same puzzle, some keep dividing them as two separated disciplines and that is how and where my PhD thesis topic was triggered.

Traethawd ymchwil

Translation and Adaptation in Epic Fantasy: Game of Thrones and its Afterlives

My current research focus is on the intersections between translation studies and adaptation studies. It casts new light on unexplored case studies and underlines their theoretical importance to key debates in the spheres of translation and adaptation theory.

Game of Thrones is a key case study for the following two reasons: (1) As a fictional work, Game of Thrones is supposed to be unattached to any culture/language since it happens in transnational fantasy settings. Have said that, Game of Thrones is heavily rooted in the European culture which brings us to the fact that texts are always adapted from previous works, scripts, events, and cultures. Thus, Game of Thrones has the potential to intervene in debates about the source text, its originality and how it may or may not be transposed in acts of adaptation and translation. (2) The multiplicity and diversity of the attempts made to bring Game of Thrones to the Arabic-speaking world with each of them being motivated by different ideologies and poetics.

 With such diverse data, I attempt to revisit Lefevere's notion of rewriting, but in the Arabic language, a language that was not investigated by Lefevere. Lefevere argues that texts are rewritten for a different audience and different contexts and the produced texts are shaped by different ideologies and poetics. However, I would like also to use his notion and expand it to examine and determine if platforms can be a formative force as well.

 My work evaluates Venuti's concept of the translator's visibility. Venuti has discussed the translator's visibility in some languages and in some platforms. However, his discussion has not included some of the contemporary platforms such as social media platforms and streaming websites, a critical blind spot which my thesis works to rectify.

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