A comparative Analysis of Two Arabic Translations of William Wordsworth's I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud in the Light of Peter Newmark's Cultural Translation Theory

Abstract

Poetry translation represents one of the most complex forms of translation because it requires the transfer of linguistic meaning together with cultural, aesthetic, and emotional dimensions to be balanced between the two cultures.  Unlike ordinary texts, poetry contains symbolic images, metaphors, and culturally embedded expressions that challenge translators to achieve a balance between faithfulness to the source text and acceptability in the target language ,therefore, this is a major challenge for the translator. This study comparatively examines two Arabic translations of William Wordsworth's Romantic poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, focusing on the translations produced by Abdullah Waki'a and Hasssan Hijazi. The study adopts Peter Newmark's (1988) theory of cultural translation as its main analytical framework, particularly his classification of cultural elements into five categories: ecology, material culture, social culture, organizations, customs, activities and concepts, and gestures and habits that may be carried by the original text. A qualitative comparative methods employed to identify culture-specific expressions in the original poem and analyze the strategies used in conveying the poem into Arabic. The study also draws on major translation theories proposed by Jakobson (1959), Nida (1964), Bassnett (2014), Baker (2018), Venuti (1995) to explain the relationship between translation, culture, and equivalence in both languages. The findings reveal that both translators successfully convey many aspects of Wordsworth's poetic meaning; however, they adopt different approaches in their translations. Hijazi generally follows a semantic orientation by preserving the cultural imagery and symbolic meanings of the original poem, whereas Waki'a frequently employs adaptation, explanation, and modification to attract the Arab readers. The study concludes that Newmark's cultural categories provide an effective framework for evaluating literary translation and that successful poetry translation requires a balance between preserving the cultural identity of the ST and   producing an acceptable translated text.