English-Arabic Translation of Humour: Challenges and Strategies

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the challenges that native Arabic-speaking EFL learners face in rendering the equivalent meaning of humorous excerpts selected from Plum Pie (1966), a collection of short stories by English humourist P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975). The researchers examined the translation strategies used by a sample of 16 senior Arabic-speaking BA and MA students specialising in English and translation at the University of Sharjah, to solve the problems that they encountered in the translation process. The findings indicated that the participants encountered lexical, semantic, grammatical and syntactic problems in the process of translation. The findings showed that the participants used 10 main strategies to translate the excerpts, with literal translation being the most frequently employed. The findings also revealed several mistranslations or errors, which have been classified as lexical errors, grammatical errors, mistranslations of cultural references or items, and inappropriate use of certain translation strategies. These results led us to conclude that some translation strategies (e.g. the use of literal translation instead of idiomatic, and vice versa) were unsuitable and reflected a need for improvement of  linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in the target language, which is essential for enabling Arab EFL learners to translate humorous literary texts.