Analytical Study of Arabic Translation of Charles Dicken's Novel Oliver Twist Translated by Fadel H.Muhsen with Reference to Passive Sentences

Abstract

This study devoted to investigate the difficulties in rendering English passive construction into Arabic. The study aims to discuss the difficulties that translators encounter and sheds light on the strategies they may employ to overcome such difficulties. It also aims to look into the reasons behind these difficulties. This study is based on a hypothesis stating that failure of rendering English passive sentence into Arabic is due to:1 lack of language competence. 2 unawareness on the part of the translator that, he is dealing with rare passive structure. 3 the interference of English language structures by away of literal translation, leads to the dominance of English structure. To prove this hypothesis Baker's(2018) grammatical equivalence and the grammar of both languages is adopted as theoretical frame. While, the methodology is based on the translation of passive sentences extracted from the novel of Dickens Oliver Twist (1812) translated by Habeeb( 2002 ). The results of research tend to confirm two point of the hypothesis and disconfirm one. The result shows that, translators fail sometimes to render certain English passive constructions, because of their poor linguistic competence in Arabic. Translators affected by English structure and style and their overuse of literal translation.