A Critique of Jabra’s Arabic Translation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Abstract

This study critiques and evaluates Jabra’s translation of The Tempest into Arabic. This translation poses a lot of problems stemming from the differences between English and Arabic, the difficulty and ambiguity of the original text, and the translator’s approach.The discussion demonstrates the great efforts made by the translator to convey the equivalent meanings of the text. It also clearly shows that Jabra’s translation is literal, that the translator sometimes uses colloquial, inaccurate, and nonpoetic words that add to the ambiguity of the text, that he sometimes gives good translations, that he makes slight mistakes, and that he sometimes deletes or drops words or lines from the text, which represents a flagrant violation of the ethics of translation.Despite the pitfalls, Jabra’s translation of The Tempest is the fruit of hard work deserving of praise and appreciation. The mistakes made are ascribed to the difficulty of translating literature whose language consists of figures of speech that defy translation.

Key words: Shakespeare; Drama in translation; Language; English; Arabic; Syntax; Figures of speech; Literary translation; Strategies of translation