The Transfer of cultural aspects of Maqamat of Badie Al-Zaman in English literature: A Contrastive Study The Transfer of the cultural aspects of Maqamat of Badie Al-Zaman in English literature

الملخص

One of the world's oldest literary types is Arabic literature. Maqamat of Badie Al-Zaman is a unique form of Arabic literature that has drawn the attention of scholars and translators working on a variety of languages, including English. Using Nida's types of translation and Ghazala’s point of view about translation, this study compares the English translation of Badie Al-Zaman to the Arabic source text. The performed analysis is qualitative. The study provides an important answer to the following questions: What are the most effective translation approaches for capturing cultural aspects in translating Maqamat, such as formal or dynamic (functional) translation? And when is transliteration appropriate for translating culturally specific terms in Maqamat, and how does it compare to other translation methods? The originality of the research stems from its analysis of the English translation of an authentic literary text that paved the way for the art of  “Prosimetrum”. It was a new art followed by many successive poets in later times. One noteworthy discovery is that the translation of Maqamat in English is appropriate and acceptable, and it conveys the cultural aspects found in the Arabic source text to a large extent through the use of formal and dynamic equivalents, or even transliteration.