Revue Algérienne des Sciences du Langage
Volume 11, Numéro 1, Pages 575-590
2026-06-10

Submissive Vs Resistant Translation: Suppressing Linguistic And Cultural Differences Or Respecting Difference



Authors : Bouanika Ibtissam .

Abstract

This article examines the translation of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958) from an ethical and intercultural perspective, with particular attention to the challenges of rendering Igbo linguistic and cultural specificity into Arabic. Drawing on Lawrence Venuti's theory of foreignization and the ethics of translation difference, and on Antoine Berman's concept of the experience of the foreign, the article argues that domesticating translation strategies risk erasing the cultural and ideological dimensions that are central to Achebe's literary project. The article proposes a threefold analytical framework — lexical, syntactic, and stylistic — for identifying culturally marked elements in the source text, and develops explicit foreignizing strategies for their Arabic translation, including lexical borrowing, literal rendering of proverbs, and structural preservation of Igbo-inflected English. The article also engages critically with the limits of foreignization as a strategy, acknowledging the risk of exoticization and the practical constraints of Arabic morphosyntax. It concludes that translating Achebe demands an ethical commitment to cultural difference — one that acknowledges the presence of the Other rather than assimilating it.

Keywords

: Foreignization, ; Domestication ; literary analysis ; Venuti, Antoine Berman ; Chinua Achebe postcolonial translation

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