The Transfer Of Tunisian Arabic To English: A Sociopragmatic Analysis Of Efl Students’ Cultural Translation
Auteurs : Ben Slamia Fatma .
Résumé
In cultural translation, pragmatic errors during the transfer from the source language to the target language would lead to sociopragmatic failure. Precisely, this research looks into the transfer of culture-specific items (Henceforth CSIs) from Arabic into English among Tunisian EFL students at the tertiary level. The accessible population consists of second-year Master English students, majoring in Culture Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sousse, to whom the researcher has delivered a translation course on a weekly basis. Students sat for a mid-term translation exam, and were required to translate from Arabic to English a literary text that includes 18 CSIs and phrases, most of which are in Tunisian Arabic. The data, composed of 288 terms and collected from 16 students’ translation output, has been assessed using mixed-research methods. The quantitative analysis consists of descriptive statistics that measure the positive and negative transfer of CSIs; while the qualitative analysis was conducted through error analysis and a focus group interview. Quantitative results demonstrated that 52% of CSIs were negatively transferred by omitting or providing erroneous translation of CSIs in the target text. Error analysis revealed a typology of errors along with their coping strategies, that ranges from lexico-semantic and translation strategies errors, to interference. Focus group interviews with EFL learners unveiled source-text oriented and target-oriented causes of sociopragmatic.
Mots clés
culture-specific items, English, failure, sociopragmatic, transfer, Tunisian Arabic
