ترجمة رواية الخيال العلمي

Abstract

The subject of this dissertation, which is part of translation analysis and criticism, aims to study what could be described as the translation from English into the Arabic of a science fiction novel from two different angles, one terminological and the other stylistic. The concept of the science fiction novel derives from two divergent universes: fiction and science, a matter that might complicate the process of translation. The problems faced during translation of literary texts depend on socio-cultural context. The literary text is characterized by intensive use of connotative expressions that require the translator to re-express them according to the target language context requirements. In other words, the translator should keep safe the semantic content value of the departure text while reformulating the intentions of the author in an artistic and creative way into the target text in order to keep the main function of the literary text, the aesthetic function. Conversely, the technical text is much easier to translate into the target language. However, considering that the literary text deviates to use scientific and technical terms is far from being practically acceptable, because the evolution of any society affects all fields; including literary production and this is what science-fiction is all about, a genre probably not well popular in Arab societies. Distinguished by its scientific aspect, as its name suggests, the science fiction novel stands upon scientific theories and evidences to offer authors the opportunity to rebuild imaginary worlds depending on knowledge that belongs neither to the wonderful nor to the religious, but to the scientific speculation, even if it violates the principles of our current one. The translation of the science fiction novel, as a literary genre relatively more recent than poetry, is a part of literary translation, although it is different from other literary texts by the omnipresence of the technical specialized terms, and sometimes the neologism. Thus, it represents a specific type of literary texts, a mixture of both literary and technical texts, which makes the act of translating more complex and difficult. Therefore, the translator should on the one hand, take care of the connotative and aesthetic side of the work during the transfer of stylistic features of the source text. On the other hand, he should be clear and concise in the translation of scientific and technical terms, as well as in the transfer of information provided by the source. This hypothesis led to focus, in this study, on the problem of translating the science fiction novel and to wonder how it could keep its dual nature; literary and scientific, while being translated from one language to another, namely from English into Arabic. We try, throughout the research, to answer the issues raised above, and to highlight the main concepts of translation and science fiction literature. We propose to study the novel ""Digital Fortress ""of the American writer Dan Brown, a bestseller in America and worldwide. First, because it is of the class of ""techno thrillers"", a sub-category of science fiction novel, in addition, this work is distinguished by its narrative, suspense and scientific speculations that run throughout it, drawing from computing, telecommunication, cryptology and political status quo. It, thus, offers a good corpus for a research. This work has been translated into more than fifty languages, including its Arabic version, which was published in 2005, seven years after its first edition, by Arab Scientific Publishers under the title of “Al Hisn Arrakmi”, translated by Faiza Ghassan Al-Moundjid. Our choice to this translation was not arbitrary, but it was so because this version represents the only translation available in the Algerian libraries. This research work is divided into three chapters, besides the introduction and conclusion. The first two chapters deal with the topic from its theoretical side, while the third one examines the practical side. The method adopted in this work focuses on the analysis, especially semantic and stylistic, and the criticism based essentially on the confrontation of the translated text to the original one.