Investigating the Difficulties and Problems of Arabic\ English Translation Due to Cultural Differences that Encountering Postgraduate Arab Students at Sudan University of Science and Technology

Abstract

This thesis, aims to present a practical approach for the problem of the meaning losses, that occurs during the English Arabic translation process due to the cultural differences of the English and Arabic language. It mainly investigates some of the difficulties and problems of the Arabic \ English translation due to cultural differences that facing Arab learns, at the postgraduate level in Sudan University of Science and Technology. The aim of this study is to examine the translation strategies that may lead to meaning losses due to culture, and to underline the important role of the translator as informer rather than interpreter. For the purpose of the study, there were three tests of social cultural, religious and political texts were given to students. These tests were selected by the researcher to create some cultural problems in translation, it contains a selection of different translation of Arabic and English, which expose the students to different contextualized writings. The study consists of five chapters. Chapter one acts as an introduction, presenting the whole study and focusing on the research problems, aims and objectives of the research, the limitation, methods and thesis overview. Chapter two is literature review and similar studies about translation focusing on the cultural element.Chapter three focuses on the researcher case study and presents background, framework of different scholars of translation in the Arab world and the western one. It also generates questions on the translation text, and analysis of some specific translation issues focusing on culture and students’ strategies and how they employ their experience and overcome the difficulties of the cultural element. Chapter four is the discussion of the result; it focuses on the analysis of the quantitative data analysis is to show the percentages of errors made by the sample used in this research, who are the postgraduate level in Sudan University of Science and Technology, the MA translation class of academic year 2016- 2017. It also includes the tables and graphs showing to show the results accurately. Chapter five is the conclusion and recommendations. This chapter is a summary for the whole thesis suggesting some solutions for the translation difficulties that appeared from the results of the translation tests which have been given to the student, plus some useful suggestions, recommendations for Sudan University of Science and Technology, at the college of languages and translation where this study was conducted and some further study.