Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, Kashan University, Isfahan, Iran
2 Ph.D. Student of Arabic Literature Department of Arabic Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran.
3 Assistant Professor of Translation Studies, Department of English, Faculty of Literature and Foreign Languages, University of Kashan, Kashan, Iran.
Abstract
Proper names in travel narratives are not merely referential devices used to identify individuals, places, or institutions. Rather, they may perform functions that go beyond identification, conveying layers of meaning, identity, ideology, and cultural memory. This study, focusing on the novel The Travelogue of Ebrahim Beyg and drawing on Gibka’s (2018) two-act model, investigates the secondary functions that proper names assume in the source text. The findings revealed that they include sociological, localizing, semantic, humorous, didactic-educative, conative, allusive, revealing, expressive, desirous, poetic, camouflaging, and commemorative functions. The Arabic translation of the novel was then analyzed using Fernándes’ (2006) translation procedures to evaluate the effectiveness of each in transferring the functions. The findings indicated that “copying” has been more successful than other procedures in conveying certain functions—particularly the sociological and localizing functions—but has proved ineffective in representing the complex functions of personal and place names. A final analysis, based on Soja’s (1996) theory of Thirdspace, revealed that many culturally significant spaces that go beyond geographic places are semantically reduced in translation, becoming merely geographic in nature. The study emphasizes the necessity of a function-oriented and context-aware approach to the translation of proper names.
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