Traducción del diminutivo español al árabe: retos y propuestas Estudio aplicado a la traducción árabe de Los cachorros y La colmena

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Spanish Department, Faculty of Humanities, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

The diminutive is a linguistic phenomenon that exists in both Spanish and Arabic to add notional or expressive meanings to the word to which it is added. Given its frequent use in the Spanish language, whether in everyday conversation or in written texts; the diminutive has aroused the interest of linguists throughout the centuries. However, the diminutive does not have the same abundance of studies in translation, especially in the Spanish-Arabic variant. For this reason, the objective of this paper is to explore how translators have transmitted the different meanings ​​of the diminutive when translating two Spanish novels into Arabic (Los cachorros by Mario Vargas Llosa and La colmena by Camilo José Cela) and find out if the existence of the same linguistic phenomenon in both languages ​​is considered a tool that facilitates the work of the translator, or rather other translation techniques are necessary to present to the Arabic reader the different meanings ​​that the Spanish diminutive expresses in the original text. The analysis of the corpus has shown that, to translate the Spanish diminutive into Arabic, translators normally resort to the technique of omission or literal translation, a fact that is inappropriate on many occasions, as a large part of the meaning, both notional and appreciative, of the diminutive is lost and considerable errors are made in the translation. So, we have outlined some translation proposals that aim to shake the conscience of translators and contribute to a better translation of the connotative meanings ​​of the Spanish diminutive into Arabic.

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