Functions and Translation of Palestinian Dialect in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses

Abstract

The problems that translators of fiction, especially novels, face when translating dialects from one language to another vary because dialects are distinct as much as cultures and language systems are distinct. It is noticeable that Palestinian authors use colloquial language in dialogues and special expressions, striving to attain aesthetic and cultural merits or more realism in the text. Thus, an accurate translation of literary dialect is necessary to preserve the effect of the colloquial language that increases the authenticity of the testimony and adds a sense of reliability since mistranslation of it might undermine the subject matters of the literary work. Therefore, studying dialect translation issues by situating these studies into their contexts can be very effective since it helps both translators and readers recognize their own functionality. This paper examines Nancy Roberts’ translation of the Palestinian dialect from Arabic into English in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses. It seeks to identify the problems experienced by the translator when dealing with dialect in the novel under study. It also focuses on how the loss of translation can lead to the loss of repertoire of implications embedded in the dialects employed in Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses. The data of the study consists of Palestinian dialect utterances and expressions and their English translations. The novel is teeming with utterances having traces of the Palestinian dialect. However, the researchers analyze a number of random examples that are assumed to be the most representative of each function on basis of their own judgment. The paper analyses the source text dialectical utterances for their functions as well as their socio-cultural implications. The study involves a descriptive analysis in tandem with a comparative textual analysis. The data of the ST will be classified according to their different functions, and then data will be compared with their English counterparts to examine the different strategies used in translating the dialect. House's model (1997) of register analysis in tandem with Venuti’s (1995) theory of domestication and foreignization is adopted as the theoretical framework of the analysis. In light of these models, the study proceeds to discuss translation strategies used to deal with dialect and how these strategies affect the implications and messages encoded in dialectical usage. Furthermore, it deals with dialect markers and the extent to which these markers were preserved in the target text. We suggest in this article that Nasrallah’s use of local dialect in his work is testimonial and historical in attitude. The dialect the author uses retrieves collective memories that local collective memoirs also share while bearing witness to historic events remembered and commemorated. The study reveals that there are mismatches in the register variables between the source and the target text considering that the majority of the dialectical utterances are standardized. It also shows that Palestinian dialect performs various functions in the novel such as signalling familial relationships, signalling social distance, asserting the Palestinianism of the story, generating humor, and codification. Furthermore, the study reveals that the identity of the dialect is attained through phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical markers. Standardization of dialect markers conceals the traces of the existence of dialect in the text. Thereby, the study contends that domesticating the dialect markers utilizing standardization strategy threatens and undermines the contours of the national identity of dialect and consequently the national identity of the text as whole. Thereby, domesticating the dialect by the means of standardization hurdles the functions meant by the employment of Palestinian dialect in the text as well as the Palestinianism of the text constructed through the use of dialect.