Contextual Dynamics in Free Translation: A Critical Context-based Analysis of Dr. S. Khalusi’s Arabic Translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
This study explores the contextual factors surrounding the Arabic version of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare, translated by Dr. S. Khalusi. Specifically, it looks at how the situational, interpersonal/cultural, and co-textual contexts affect the tone, images, and language choices in the work, and how they impact the meaning of the original text over time. The study uses a qualitative research method among which a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach is utilized as a tool to analyze the interrelations among the text, discourse practice and social context in relation to the translations and their possible implications are assessed through Fairclough’s (2013) three-dimension of analysis. In regard to the situational context, it has been found that the Arab translator enhances the environment, intensifies natural forces and heat, shifts expressions to certainty, and reinforces inevitability, fatalism, permanence, spatial concreteness, and temporal explicitness. In regard to the interpersonal context, the Arabic text expresses less uncertainty than its English counterpart, more intensity and exaltation of admiration, less intimacy, more depth of metaphor from a cosmic perspective, certainty rather than possibility, more reinforcing of immortality, personification of death, greater emphasis on preserving poetry and authorial presence, and asserts the poet’s authority over giving eternal life. The Arabic free translation enhances the lexicon, grammar of English and the devices of cohesion – thereby improving admiration, adding more assertive content and enhancing the links between the themes and time within the text. Consequently, it has been concluded that free translation can enrich the situational, interpersonal, and co-textual aspects of the poem increasing the poetic authority, clarity, and timeless resonance of the text.
Keywords: Contextual Dynamics, Literary Free Translation, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, Critical Discourse Analysis, Fairclough’s Three-D Model of Analysis
