The Translation of Selected Cultural Items in Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths: A Descriptive and Analytical Study

Abstract

Cultural words usually pose some challenges to translators, especially when they translate texts into languages which are culturally different. This study investigates the translation of cultural items in The Forty Hadiths by Imam Al-Nawawi. It adopted the qualitative approach for selecting and analyzing the translation of culturally-bound items of the selected Prophet Mohammed’s hadiths posted on the Web by Sunnah.com. Moreover, it used Lambert and Van Gorp’s (1985) method to examine the translations and Vinay and Darbelnet's translation strategies to identify the procedures selected by the translators to convey the meanings of the cultural contents. The findings indicated that the translators implemented various procedures to convey the cultural meanings of the hadiths. However, whenever confronted with difficult categories, due to the lexical, syntactic and cultural differences between Arabic and English, they were inconsistent in their choices of translation procedures. Furthermore, they did not succeed in rendering the aesthetic features of the Prophet’s utterances, an issue that is yet to be addressed by researchers. The present study provides implications which could be useful for translators, especially translators of religious texts.